Learning to Fly: My Concussion

 

“I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing.”

Tom Petty

 

Three months ago, my son Kyle and I were hiking on a steep slick-rock pour-off. We were trying to catch some little frogs and return them to the muddy pond on the bottom of the slick-rock. He was bending over to grab one of these little frogs below me and I was standing above him with my boots gripping the steep slope. Not thinking about my surroundings, I leaned forward to look at the frog and ending up falling.

Now, slick-rock is a misnomer as it is not slick at all. It's actually a gritty, rough sandstone that grips the bottom of one's shoes and is deceivingly easy to walk on. And a pour-off is where the rain concentrates after a storm to flow downhill on rock, also known as a seasonal waterfall. In wet years, the pool underneath this pour-off becomes filled with water, but this year it was just wet and quickly drying sand.

Kyle tried to grab my flailing arm, but he couldn’t catch me. Instinctively, I twisted around in mid-air, landed on my right butt cheek and hit the back of my head on the surprisingly hard ground. I probably fell about six feet.

My glasses flung off, but they weren’t broken or anything. Kyle called out to my husband Scott, who was waiting for us nearby. By the time Scott reached me, I was sitting on a rock with an aching head and feeling dizzy. I don't remember getting up from the ground and walking to the rock. Both Scott and Kyle agreed that I should go to the hospital and helped me walk back to the car. After stopping by the house to change, Scott drove me to the emergency room. 

A CT scan showed a crack in my skull on the top of my head, although I have no idea how I hit it there, and two small brain bleeds in the subarachnoid and subdural layers of tissue between my skull and my brain. (I'd never heard of these layers before and had to look them up later). The doctors diagnosed me with a concussion and kept me in the hospital overnight to make sure the bleeding had stopped. Although they woke me up every hour to make sure my pupils were equal, I knew where I was, I could focus on how many fingers they were holding up, and I was grateful to be there. 

 

 

I had another CT scan the next morning that showed the bleeding had in fact stopped so they let me go home. That’s when I discovered I had a very sore and swollen right butt cheek, which developed into a large salad bowl-sized hematoma (deep bruise) that is still swollen and bruised two months later, but is not sore anymore—thank goodness. The top of my head throbs and I still have a lump on the back of my head.

I hadn’t thought about concussions much before this happened to me, but now I’m fairly well versed. Basically, concussions happen when your brain slams against your skull and gets injured. Because my brain went forward when I hit the back of my head and then back, they call it a contre-coup brain injury. So far, I’ve had most of the symptoms of a moderate concussion: fatigue, dizziness, headaches, ocular migraines (the fun part of migraines—aura but no headache), light and noise sensitivity, over-stimulation which causes panic attacks and, worst of all, a loss of my sense of smell. That means I can’t taste anything except what the taste buds on my tongue detect: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, the savory taste of cooked meat and vegetables.

Before I lost my sense of smell, I didn't understand the difference between taste and flavor. Think of when you last had a head cold and couldn't breath through your nose. You couldn't taste your food very well because you couldn't smell what you were eating. However, you could still pick out some flavors  because the chewed up food in your mouth also passes by your olfactory nerves a second time when you breathe in. The molecules coming from the outside of your body tell you what you are going to eat via your nasal cavity. The molecules coming from inside your mouth give you the ability to distinguish between flavors. Taste buds plus aroma from both your nose and mouth equals flavor.  

If you have damaged your olfactory nerves, you can't detect flavor and have to enjoy foods by how they feel in your mouth (mouthfeel), what your taste buds can detect, and how you feel after you eat. I hope I get my sense of smell back, but I have a feeling it has been damaged beyond repair.

Here is a good link if you want to learn more about the sense of smell: https://www.physio-pedia.com/Olfactory_Nerve

Or if you prefer just looking at a diagram, here is the photo that comes with the above article:

What you can't tell from the photo above is how thin the bony barrier (called the cribriform plate) is between the brain and the olfactory nerves in my nose that detect smell molecules. Olfactory nerves   terminate in the olfactory bulb, which transmits the detected smell molecules to the brain. Since the olfactory nerves dangle down from the top of the nasal cavity, they are easily damaged if a person suffers a traumatic brain injury (TBI) such as mine. When the brain slams against the nerves, it can shear them off or severely damage them. Although olfactory nerves have the ability to grow back, there is no telling if mine are too damaged to grow back. Meanwhile, I’m sniffing everything I can find: essential oils, spices, plants, the air after it rains, etc. and hoping the repeated scent onslaught will bring my sense of smell back. But so far no luck.

Hidden Enemies

When I first wrote this post, I identified with the main character in the recent Netflix movie Tick Tick BOOM. He'd been working on a musical for 8 years and in one week would be showing the musical for the first time. Only one problem--he had to write one more key song. He sat at the computer and started a sentence. Then he corrected the sentence, then he deleted the sentence, then he rewrote the beginning of the sentence. He sat there, watching the cursor tick and tick and tick . . . 

I published the book Hidden Enemies in 2020. This book received an Honorable Mention at the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards so I know it must be a halfway decent read. In 2020, I also changed my book Remember Me from past tense to present tense. Remember Me received first place in the suspense category in the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book awards and Honorable Mention at the Hollywood Book Festival. So I know it also must be a half-way decent read.

But few people have read it and it's all my fault. I have done a terrible job of marketing my books and have made very few sales. 

So at least someone would read them,  I decided to donate my books to the library yesterday and talked to the person in charge. He said if they are self-published, he needs to take a look at any book reviews on Amazon as well as the books themselves. I left him one copy of each book, plus Red Flag Warning that I had to regain my rights from Infinity years ago when they went out of business and republish myself (long story). I never heard back.

Back then, I was inspired and I had a lot to say. Then the pandemic hit . . . and I have been languishing. I am working on another book, but it's going slowly. And now, for the first time, I understand writer's block.

Since these books are difficult to find by searching Amazon.com, here is my author link: https://www.amazon.com/stores/M-A-Florence/author/B00915SFSE?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

So, I have two interesting sci-fi light, suspense books for you to read!! And I hope you take me up on it. 

2024 Update: I just finished converting Remember Me into the screenplay Mem-G. So maybe my story will get traction in the movie industry. I'm also on the home stretch of my fourth sci-fi light, suspense book. Wish we me luck that I will get it done this year! The working title is The Time is Now.

Finding SIBO

Finding SIBO

 

What is SIBO you ask? Well, it took me a long time to find out. But now I know why my digestive system has been out of whack since I had my cancerous appendix removed in February 2017 and a subsequent right hemicolectomy 16 days later. (A right hemicolectomy is the term for an operation that removes the beginning of the large intestine: which consists of the cecum and the appendix, the small finger-like projection on the bottom of the cecum). A general picture of the digestive system shows the appendix hanging down from the cecum:

Not long after I recovered from my surgery, I began getting mild acid indigestion. I kept a food diary and discovered soy products were part of the problem. So I stopped drinking soy milk, and eating tofu and protein bars made with soy. That worked for a while; then the acid indigestion came back. So  I stopped taking fish oil pills, which can--surprisingly--cause acid indigestion in some people. That didn't help much, so I decided to start taking my vitamins after eating breakfast, instead of at night. No change. Then I gave up coffee. I gave up wine and beer. I gave up chocolate. I put myself on a high alkaline/low acid diet. Nothing helped. 

I got to the point where I was taking Tums before going to bed every night, waking up multiple times with acid indigestion, taking more Tums, and paying the price of all this indigestion and lack of sleep the next day.  I turned to the internet and found a help group consisting of people like me who had digestion problems after having a intestinal surgery, especially a right hemicolectomy. Bingo. All these people had tried a lot of different diets that were not always successful and most were still searching for a cure. I further discovered that when my surgeon removed my cecum and appendix, he also removed a one-way valve that separates the large and small intestines. It's called the ileocecal valve.

In a complete digestive system, food travels one way: from mouth to stomach to small intestine to large intestine and then out of the body. The direction of this process is controlled by peristalsis (the muscular contraction of the esophageal and intestinal walls), sphincters and valves. Basically, digestion consists of mechanical breakdown (chewing), and chemical and enzymatic breakdown (acids in the stomach; bile and enzymes in the small intestine). Most of the nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream from the small intestine and only a small number of specific bacteria inhabit it. The digested food then travels through the one-way ileocecal valve to the cecum, which absorbs water, vitamins and electrolytes, then into the colon where a large number of bacteria break down waste products and produce vitamin K.

From studying the digestive process, I learned that missing an ileocecal valve is not a good thing. Without this valve, bacteria from my large intestine can back up into the small intestine, colonize there and wreak havoc. I finally found SIBO: Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. 

I went to my primary doctor and he put me on antibiotics, which helped for a while. But the acid ingestion came back with a vengeance. I needed a permanent fix. So I tried different diets until I finally happened upon a miracle: a diet that switched me from absolute misery to symptom-free. It's called the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) and is outlined in the book "Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Here is a link: http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/home/

This book was written for people with large intestine problems, but it works for me. On this diet, I'm starving the bacteria that traveled up from my large intestine by cutting out foods that contain easy-to-digest carbohydrates. For example, flours, sugars and refined grains. I also gave up bread and gluten. The very day I started this diet, my symptoms disappeared. Not only did I find SIBO, I discovered how to lose it! 

Self-publishing with CreateSpace (Now called KDP)

Notice: The name publishing name CreateSpace has been changed to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), but otherwise it's still a product of Amazon.com and works the same way. KDP is a self-publishing service that doesn't cost a cent, if you do everything yourself. I've published 3 novels using KDP already and they are available on Amazon.com. I also finished rewriting the novel Red Flag Warning and am in the process of publishing it, too, on KDP.

Why am I publishing this book again on KDP?

1.  In 2012, before I knew about inexpensive do-it-yourself publishing, I paid Infinity Publishing to be my publisher for this book. I'd  already gone through the traditional publishing model, where I searched for an agent and sent chapters to what few publishers took unsolicited manuscripts. After some time passed without results, I learned about "vanity presses" as they were called then. I talked to some fellow writers who had self-published and decided on Infinity Publishing. After paying for them to design the cover and put my book into print, they put it on Amazon.com for me in paperback and kindle versions. I only sold a few copies, which was OK.

2. After I wrote a few more books and published them on KDP I saw that Red Flag Warning had been marked way up in price. I contacted Infinity Publishing about it and they changed the price back to what it should have been. But when I searched the Infinity Publishing website, I found that it had been sold to another company. My feelers went up when the website also did not work very well. I contacted the agent again about buying author copies and learned there were a minimum number of copies I had to order and it was expensive. Not so with KDP. An author pays how much it costs to print each book, with no minimum  number of copies required, plus shipping. I then looked up Infinity Publishing in the Better Business Bureau and it got an "F". That did it for me. I asked them to free me from my contract, which they did.

3.  Now was my opportunity to have total control of Red Flag Warning! I reviewed the manuscript, which I saved, and saw many ways to improve my writing. KDP allows the flexibility to change a book at any time. One still has to go through all the steps again, which can be a pain, but at least the author has the opportunity to change his/her book without payment. In the finished project, my story is exactly the same, but I made it smoother and faster to read.

4.  I get 100% of the royalties for any books and kindle copies sold!
 

Drawbacks to using KDP

 
1.  If you want a decent cover, you need to hire a graphic designer to do it for you. For my book Remember Me, I did just that (my son's girlfriend, who is a graphic designer).

As you can see, she did an excellent job and it helped me win several awards--first place in the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the suspense category and an honorable mention in fiction in the 2018 Hollywood Book Festival. Since many writers enter these contests, I finally feel validated that I'm a good writer.  For Red Flag Warning, I am using the front cover I paid for and had to make up the back cover myself (which is not nearly as polished as theirs--but that's how it goes).

2.  There are a lot of steps to go through and you need to check everything to make sure it is correct. Self-publishing also requires a thorough edit and knowing how to set up a book. Some people will pay for an editor, but I am very lucky to have my husband and a few friends point out my mistakes. Since I was originally trained as a botanist and am largely self-taught as a writer, I definitely need the help! As for setting up the book, the author needs to have fairly extensive word processing skills. I was forever looking things up at first, but now I think I have the hang of it.

3.  The author must market him/herself. I'm not much of a marketer so I'll probably never become famous or make a lot of money on my books. Oh well; all I want is to get my books out there and to be read by someone, instead of piles of paper in a drawer. If a person doesn't have an Amazon.com account, that can be a drawback as far as sales go, too. But there are ways around that. That's one reason I send out this blog!

Synopsis of "Remember Me"

Hello faithful readers,

I'm feverishly working on fixing up my approximately 90,000 word manuscript, Remember Me, and am now on Chapter 32 out of 36. Almost done!!

Here is the synopsis of the story. I'm hoping to get it published with the help of an agent I knew when I lived in Chantilly, VA. I hope you find it interesting.

Remember Me

Synopsis

San Francisco University neuroscientist ROBIN LUND is puzzled by her lab chimpanzee Chelsea’s behavior. The experimental memory and learning drug Mem-G, which is designed to restore short-term memory recall in dementia sufferers, appears to be enabling Chelsea to experience ancestral memories encoded in her DNA. 

To more fully understand this drug, Robin illegally begins taking it herself. What she learns is both stunning and dangerous: her mother is not who she thought she was and a man her mother once knew wants Robin dead. Her mother knew this man as ANDRE TREMBLAY but now he goes by the name of DR. MARC BORDEAUX. Dr. Bordeaux is now Senior Vice President of Zerbico Pharmaceutical Company, the corporation that formulated the drug Mem-G. 

As Robin embarks on a journey of self-discovery, Dr. Bordeaux will do everything he can to prevent her from uncovering his criminal past. NICK EVANS, an ex-cop, helps Robin stay one step ahead of Dr. Bordeaux while she explores Mem-G nightly and travels to her hometown, Denver, to find out what happened to her mother. Dr. Bordeaux’s relentless pursuit continues, leading to a final chase that ends up at a police station. There, both she and Nick turn over evidence linking Dr. Bordeaux to the crime that put Robin’s mother in prison, where she died shortly after Robin was born.

Chronic Pain

Chronic Pain

A few months after breaking my ankle, I noticed that whenever I touched my right leg and foot from about 2 inches above the incision down to my toes, I would get an electric shock/tingly/bump-my-funny-bone-type feeling. In other words, a tender ouch.

I asked the doctor and he said he had to move a nerve out of the way when he did my surgery. He said the nerve is usually on top of the shin, but my nerve traveled down the outside of my leg. I now have tingly feelings in my foot and ankle, the result of nerve damage. He said it should take a few months to subside. But they never did. In fact, they got worse.

So, on January 25^th I had the plate and screws removed from my ankle. I was not certain that the plate was the cause of the rubber band tightness around my ankle and the intense prickly sensitivity on the top of my foot and toes, but I was willing to take a chance. I had decided that I could not live with the wincing pain every time I put my sock or shoe on or took them off, the thorny, scratching sensation I had if anything brushed against my ankle, and the dull, throbbing pain in my ankle before a storm.

(By the way, I looked “bone ache before rain” up on the internet and found out that it is real.  Before a storm, the barometric pressure drops and decreased air pressure causes tissues in the body to expand, thereby putting pressure on a sensitive area, such as an arthritic joint or injured nerve, and causing pain.) 

After they wheeled me out of the surgical room, the doctor stood at the foot of the gurney and asked me how I was feeling.  Although still woozy from the anesthesia, I could already tell that the pain had diminished considerably.  And now, 10 weeks later, we had a rain storm yesterday and my “bone ache before rain” is also gone!

It turns out my nerve had been pinched between scar tissue and the plate.  It had also branched, which is considered unusual for that particular nerve.  This information led me to do some research on nerves. Basically, nerves are made up of cells with long fibers called axons that are bundled together inside insulating sheaths, like wires in cables. Since the nerve had been undergoing pressure for over a year, it could not transport nutrients and messages properly and was becoming more injured over time.  No wonder I wasn’t healing.

Which brings me to the subject of chronic pain.  I didn’t realize I was experiencing chronic pain in my ankle and foot until the cause of it was removed.  Maybe that's because I seem to have a high pain tolerance.  After all, I walked five miles out on my broken ankle (and probably injured it more in the process) because all I could think about was the expense of calling a helicopter to fly me out.  And, a few years ago, I walked up about 1,000 feet from the Colorado River to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with two broken toes.  Not to mention childbirth.   

But those instances involve acute pain—pain experienced for a short duration and then—poof!  It’s over.  Thinking back, I can remember experiencing the pain and can describe it—sharp or throbbing or raw or a dull ache—but I can’t feel it again.

Chronic pain seems to be difficult to define.  Some doctors say chronic pain is any pain that lasts longer than 3 months at the onset.  Some say 6 months and some say over a year.  Perhaps the best definition is:  pain lasting longer than the expected time of healing. 

And what is pain, anyway?  And how can it be rated?  On a 1 to 10 scale with 1 being no pain and 10 being the strongest pain imaginable? For me, Ms Pain Tolerant, I’d give my pain before surgery about a 5 out of 10.  For someone else, it may have been a 8 or 9.

Nevertheless, subconsciously enduring that pain put a layer of tension beneath everything I did.  All the things I dislike—stinky smells, bright lights, loud or rumbling noises, annoying distractions—magnified and stressed me out so much that I felt on edge most of the time.  I gained weight, I didn’t sleep well, I snapped at my husband, I lost patience a lot more easily, I couldn’t concentrate, and I got the worst cold I've had in years.  In fact, I had to put the surgery off for 2 weeks because I wanted to get over my cold and build up my immune system first.  My quality of life had bottomed out and I didn’t even realize it until after the plate was removed!

Uproar in Utah's Dixie

I get the local paper on Fridays so that I will know the true movie times, which can be wrong online.  I know this by experience. 

The top two stories on the front page in last Friday’s paper were about the agony created in St. George by renaming Dixie State College (DSC) after it merges with the Utah University system. 

When moving here, I think I was one of the few new people who understood where the name “Dixie” came from.  In 2005, when we put our Fairfax, VA house up for sale to move to St. George, Utah, our realtor handed us a recent Washington Post article about Dixie State College.  “You have to read this,” she said in a shocked voice.   Here it is:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100401349.html

In summary, this article describes the Confederate symbols on the DSC campus:  a statue with 2 Confederate soldiers, one holding a flag; the Rebel nickname with a Southern Colonel mascot; a recently eliminated Confederate flag as the college flag; slave auctions as fund raisers, etc. etc.  It was a play on the word “Dixie,” which originally referred to the warm climate in SW Utah, the soil color (instead of being southern red mud, it’s red sand here), and the fact that the original Mormon polygamous pioneers grew cotton.  Among these pioneers were a few southerners.

We moved to St. George right after DSC changed the Rebel mascot from a good-old-boy southern Colonel to a Hawk (a red-tailed hawk, to be exact).  With a new college president came another change.  The nickname, against popular vote, changed from “Rebel” to “Red Storm.” 

As one student put it, the nickname "Red Storm" reminds her of “that time of the month.”

The new mascot became a cross-eyed bull coming out of a tornado as the mascot.  The doe-eyed bull costume failed at its introductory game.  Here is a link that may give you a chuckle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnxe_eeqIis

So, seven years later, the town is once again divided.  The locals want to keep “Dixie” in the name; most of the people from outside the area want to eliminate “Dixie” from the name.  And the college is now spending tons of money on a consultant who is gathering data and opinions about the new name. 

It’s true that this area also has a Dixie National Forest and many businesses named a “Dixie” this or a “Dixie” that.  But I don’t think any of them ever raised a Confederate flag or held slave auctions.  Nevertheless, remaining on campus to this day, is the Confederate soldiers holding a Confederate flag statue, which shows that the college still hasn’t completely rid itself of negative Confederate symbolism.  I’m surprised how many people don’t understand that. 

It will be interesting to see what happens.