LAUGHING WOLF: Lightning Strike Conference Report.
The short version is that I wish I had been able to attend one of these Lightning Strike and Electrical Shock Survivors conferences very much sooner. As in not long after I was hit. The amount of information I got was almost like being hit with a firehose. Even better was talking with other survivors and finding out I’m not alone and not crazy (well, not in terms of the after effects of the strike anyway).
The longer version is that the life I had is gone, and it’s not coming back. In the words of the song, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. In fact, I feel more than fine. There is a part of me that is sad and other emotions at knowing that life is not ever going to come back. My mind and body are never going to work the way they did, and I will never be able to do some of the things I used to do. I’m still a pilot, though I will likely never fly again. If I can adjust to that, I can learn to deal with needing grab bars in the shower.
Fact is, on many levels I had already accepted that and begun moving forward. For parts of my old life, I was and am glad to see them gone. I prefer to see it as a chance to start over, to build a new life, and hopefully a better one, despite the difficulties. While I was never one who worked at Elon-speed/level, I did okay in certain areas. I can still work through certain types of problems, it just takes me longer to do the work. As I noted to Glenn at breakfast, what used to take me 30 minutes to write back then now takes me four hours (or more to be honest).
I can still look at data and spot patterns and trends, it just may take a bit longer. On the physical side, I’m doing a lot better than I was right after the strike and the conference gave me some ideas on how to work to step up my game mentally and physically. It would be nice to be able to do full prostrations, and get up again afterwards. One thing I realized during the conference is that I’ve been viewing, and gaming, my recovery as yet another experiment — one I’ve not bothered the human subjects committee about (think Les Geddes may have rubbed off on me more than I realized).
Which is probably a good thing, as I sure can’t count on the medical field to do much on a holistic level, much less within specialties
Fascinating and touching stuff — read the whole thing.