Damn the Unexpected

Perhaps all people who have a TBI learn to plan and schedule their lives in an effort to manage their TBI and the ever looming symptoms – headache or worse headache, vertigo, fatigue, irritability, inability to do anything but go to bed and rest/sleep until symptoms dissipate. John certainly does this and it is a great help.

This is all well and good until the unexpected happens. I want to explain a situation that seems to me to be a very typical, mundane example of a way in which the unexpected has the ability to disrupt an entire day. I say mundane because, for me, this happens frequently enough so that it is no longer quite as jarring when it happens, at least to me. I suppose I expect the unexpected but am sometimes surprised when it occurs.

This past week, on Monday, we awoke to the first snowfall. It was enough to need to clear the driveway, clear and warm the car, and delay the commute. John was preparing to take Eva to school that morning. I was helping. I am unsure what order of operations he had in his head for how preparing for the morning would go but it did not go in that order and his OODA loop (if you don’t know what that is, this site offers a good explanation) was disrupted. Stay with me as I explain the details of how things derailed.

• Eva was getting ready for school: brushing teeth, getting socks and shoes on.
• I was simultaneously making breakfast for myself, trying to dictate to her what to do next (recall she is 5), and making sure she had her backpack ready.
• John needed to take my car that day so asked me where my keys were. I told him in my purse, which they typically are.
• John grabbed my purse, put his snow boots on and went outside to start warming up my car.
• I continued to do all the above mentioned but then slowly started to realize John likely was going to need some help getting ready that morning, with the snow. I had a fleeting thought to also put my boots on.
• Eva had finished getting ready (minus her backpack) and was anxiously wanting to go outside to play in the snow.
• As I walked her to the front door and opened it, John was full bore making his way back inside the house and saying to me, “Your car isn’t reading the key fob” while Eva was trying to make her way around him to get outside. It was a bit of a cluster.
• I recalled that I’d left my keys in my coat pocket. Without telling John this (I was going into full help-John and Eva mode), I put on my coat and grabbed the closest boots I could find, as well as the snow shovel.
• John went back outside to do something. Eva was outside playing.
• By the time I snow shoveled a path to my car (not wanting to step on the snow to pack it down and make it nearly impossible to clear away) and started my car, in the process throwing off a windshield cover of snow over to the front passenger side of my car, where John was unbeknownst to me, standing, he was frustrated and nearly into a bad/fuzzy brain day. This all in a matter of a few minutes.

When I threw off the snow, I head a humph from him and realized he was struggling. I wasn’t really quite sure why though. When he began to tell me that by my coming out to help and Eva coming out to play, we’d disrupted his OODA loop, I’m sorry to say I nearly laughed. I smiled and told him to calm down, all would be well. I offered to take Eva to school because John was explaining further to me that he’d had a plan for the morning that had already been completely disrupted. I was close to laughing because, to me, it seemed all so simple and easily adjusted to, certainly not something to get upset about. The first snow can set the best of us to asunder after all. But, he was really having a hard time adjusting.

John ended up taking her to school and came home to rest. It took him a bit to calm down from the disorder but he did. This all was likely compounded by the fact that he had just returned home the Saturday before from a long and tedious drive home from a fishing trip that left him symptomatic (full on with vertigo, a raging headache, word recall issues, slurred speech, one eye lid slightly drooping, total inability to handle more than one thing at a time). He still hadn’t recovered from that even though Sunday had been restful. The disruption of events on Monday still impacted him. Actually, the next day, Tuesday, he was still so fuzzy that he took a very early nap and slept 4 hours straight, getting up in enough time to eat dinner, help get Eva ready for bed, and going back to sleep at his normal time. Today, Wednesday, I think he is finally rested enough to be back into a good brain day.

Lesson learned? Not really sure there is one. It’s just an explanation of a day in our life.