I emailed my neurodoc a long time ago a tweet about what reading means to me. He’d repeatedly said my emails were important; he understood they were my way of communicating what I needed to talk about during our sessions. He printed, signed, filed it. And he wonders why he isn’t succeeding with me.
A very #HappyBirthday to Sir Quentin Blake ... a perfect day to share my favourite poster EVER! #RightsOfTheReader pic.twitter.com/vjxm9EsYsD
— St Helens Libraries (@STHLibraries) December 16, 2015
As far as my neurodoc seems concerned, drugs and the DSM are the only answers. Using newer communication methods is, well, he’s not going to do it. Learning about 21st-century discoveries of the brain and brain injury aren’t actually to be acted upon. Working in a Toronto teaching hospital, one can’t be too forward thinking, y’know. After all his ABI expert colleague didn’t want to burden his brain with 20+-year-old knowledge of thermoregulation. Better to tell the patient to get on with their life than help them. But I digress.
Let me help my neurodoc figure out what to do.
He could’ve printed out that poster. At our session immediately following me sending that email, he could’ve shown me the poster and read it out to me then asked: “Tell me how you feel or what you’re thinking as I read that out to you?” I probably would’ve bumbled around or resented being asked how I feel since half the time back then I had no clue. So then he could’ve brought up each pictogram, maybe mused about what he thought, and drawn me into a discussion. That at least would’ve started my thinking. It would’ve brought up memories. And memories would’ve dragged up emotions and the grief — over time. Doing that only for one session would’ve stopped the process of my broken brain remembering, reconnecting memories to emotions, processing the grief. Sticking to that topic over the next few sessions would’ve continued that process. But, y’know, email.
My futile attempt at communicating some deep, hidden-to-my-conscious mind emotion I could barely talk about all began with an email. And since the Ontario government won’t pay for emails and Canadian physicians think emails are the devil’s work or way too innovative or something like that, my grief over losing my reading went unheard. This was one of many attempts I made to get reading rehab going, to have my grief over losing the core of my identity being heard. Telling him that being a reader who inhaled books like opium — well, that went unheard, ignored, dismissed, shut down, year in and year out while I dragged him like a dead weight to help me rehab my reading, one agonizing step at a time, with rising hope as I glacially made progress only for him to “forget” the rehab, forcing me to remind, nag, beg to resume again. I’ve put my neurodoc on hiatus. The emotional cost of reading rehab is no longer worth it.
