October 16, 2002

• SUMMER SICKNESS

  
  

  I’ve been sick a lot this summer…  I wasn’t really comfortable talking about it until I started getting better.  I dunno, it’s just a bit personal for me.

  
  

  But recently, I have started to feel better.  Plus, I’ve been feeling really guilty about falling behind on emails…  so I figured an explanation was in order.

  
  

  I finally wrote up an explanation of my sickness and thought I’d share:

  
  

  
  

  On June 13th, I got attacked while walking home.  It was late at night, somewhere near City Hall — the street seemed so well lit, and yet some street goons ambushed me from the dark alleys.  Two of them ran screaming towards me, while the third snuck up behind me with a two-by-four.  I’ve seen a lot of street scams, but I didn’t see this one coming.

  
  

  Even though I was knocked to the ground, I was lucky: I’ve done enough amateur sparring that I was able to block most of the kicks.  But kicks are a lot harder to block than punches and one of them slipped through, cracking me in the head.  This got me fairly upset, and somehow that anger got me back up on my feet.  Then all the boxing training came back and I was ok again.  At least, I’m assuming that’s what happened because the next thing I remember, my knuckles were bleeding and the three guys were running off.

  
  

  I figured the memory loss was just part of the massive adrenaline rush from the encounter.  I didn’t really notice the raging headache either, what with the assorted cuts and bruises from the beating I took.  Over the next few weeks I kept up my usual publishing schedule, putting out an article on Blogs as Disruptive Tech and doing an interview on the Blogosphere.

  
  

  But it slowly got harder and harder to write, and soon I noticed an unusually constant headache.  After a while I couldn’t write any articles at all – and some weeks, I couldn’t even blog.  I started getting dizzy just watching TV or going to the movies.

  
  

  I went to see a neurologist and we did a full battery of tests.  Something about my reflexes got my doctor all concerned, so he ordered an MRI workup.  I lucked out: no bleeding in the brain (good news – that would be life-threatening).  But my symptoms got worse rather than better, so a few weeks later I went back in for another round of testing.  Twelve hours of tests later, we had a diagnosis: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

  
  

  It sounds worse than it is, which is just a fancy word for “I’m ain’t as smaaht no more”.  To be more specific, it’s hard to focus and concentrate, and my mental stamina has diminished.  It’s slowly coming back though, as I work through a full course of “cognitive rehabilitation therapy”.  Basically, I spend a few hours a day doing basic cognitive tasks: alphabetizing words in sentences, categorizing things, making patterns out of shapes, etc.  Afterwards, my brain just aches from all that thinking (they say that’s a good sign).

  
  

  I think that all the rehab is paying off, and I’m feeling better and better.  In the meantime, I’ve offloaded a lot of my Xanga responsibilities to Marc.  I’ve slacked a bit on my personal email…  I get so much email, it’s hard to keep up. 

  
  

  I’m feeling a lot better and will try to post more on my blog, especially to give updates on what we’ve been up to at Xanga these past few weeks.  In the meantime, thanks to everyone who sent me nice emails during my time off from blogging!

  • 9:28 pm
  • 57 Comments