Hartwig's Story Part 3

With the "ABC" I began relatively early again. I already reported on it. At the beginning it took relatively long until I finished one page. But then with the time naturally everything went better. I have to admit that that it took a lot of patience to get one step after the next. At the moment I make the "ABC" usually once per week in different variants. To say what I mean I have a few examples:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
acegikmoqsuwy
BDFHJLNPRTVX
and many further. 

Sometimes written by hand, sometimes with computer. As said for the moment only once per week. I still notice that if I get stuck that it take two or three seconds until everything is resolved. 

It was really difficult to do the changing of the clock at the beginning. At the moment changing full hours is not a problem. But at the beginning even placing of full hours was connected with problems. In the meantime placing goes relatively problem free to a quarter hour, so 0:00, 0:15, 0:30, 0:45, 1:00, 1:15, 1:30, 1:45, 2:00. If I however have a non digital clock and I have to exactly adjust it on the minute the process takes very long.

Here is again an exercise from Cogpack. The task of the user is to give names to 14 pictures. The user is allowed to take characters and numbers. As said the first part of the exercise is to provide a name for each picture. You have to provide names for pictures that make sense, e.g. a mountain range is shown. Or another picture shows a desert which you then name as “desert". In the first moment you think that this is not difficult at all. But normally the 14 images of a series are very similar, thus e.g. 14 mountain ranges and to each you have to give a unique name. You must provide a connection between a picture and its names. Now all pre-work is done. In the actual exercise you get an image and 14 names to select the correct one. You then must select with image you have seen. At the beginning I thought that the thing is completely simple. But due to the fact that all images of a category are relatively similar, it became - at least for me - very, very difficult.

The following is again an exercise which I try to make in parallel. If I e.g. go walking with the dog, then I let my thoughts to different things and at the same time I count in parallel. I count between -100 and 100 in both directions. I make sizes of different steps. A row I always make with a certain step size e.g. -100, -93, -86, -79, -72, -65, -58, -51, -44, -37, -30, -23, -16, -9, -2, 5, 12, 19, 26, 33, 40, 47, 54, 61, 68, 75, 82, 89, 96, 103. And then starting at 100 e.g. with a step size of “5”. Thus 100, 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60 etc.. At some point I will take bigger step sizes and larger ranges. 

At the moment I try to make more things in parallel. I began e.g. to write characters and at the same time to count. For a line I always do the some character and at the some time I count form zero to nine. Counting is done in both directions. That is a simple task doing two things at the some time.

A while ago I began to collect images in the Internet. I have a collection of images of animals, plants and fruits. I then make a slideshow and try to give the images the correct names. The assigning of images I either do at the computer or I write the names. My goal is to implement the thing in a C++ program. But that will take some time until I reach this goal.

At the moment I for some weeks observe the following phenomenon with me: I can express words problem-free. If I however take the time what that actually is what I am talking about, then I actually recognize that I do not understand the word. An example for this is the word egg whip. I don’t have any problems speaking the word. However if I start to think about what that actually means I recognize that I don’t understand the meaning. The word egg whip is not a single case, but instead this happens very often to me. I understand the word, but I do not understand its meaning. During the first part of my illness I didn’t recognize this because I was lacking many words. But now all of a sudden the words reappeared but I am still lacking the understanding of the words. It is a magnificent thing to see all that words in my vocabulary again. 

But also the reversal is very frequently the case. I can describe a word in detail with my modest vocabulary but I do not get the actual word. No question, that happens to all of us, but since I got ill it happens very often to me. An example is the word "bucket". I can describe the word exactly, partly with many details, but the word it self is missing to me.

I still have difficulties if I have to switch my brain between different things. If I e.g. make an arithmetic problem, I still have problems to switch between the operational sign and the numbers. There I recognize like in my brain something makes "click" to switch between different modes. Then it takes some time until I get from one mode to another. License numbers of a car plate in Germany are another example which I mentioned already. Here as well the problem is to switch between characters and numbers. Take e.g. the following number: B - LM - 7249, first "B" for Berlin, then "LM" that is more or less random and finally the numbers "7249". Changing from characters to numbers takes here longest.

In the last couple of weeks I have done very much with numbers. It took place in between “-100” and “100”. In most cases I do jogging, inline-skating or driving with the bike in parallel. I count in both directions and I am using numbers between “1” and “9”. Let’s use an example to illustrate my counting. I start at e.g. -50 and then I countinue with -41, then -32 and so one. Another time I start with „9“ and then I continue in steps of “7” (“16”, “23”, etc.). This means different start values and different size of steps. The reason I do this is to get a continuity of counting again. 

Frame my daughter I learned something as it came to reading and repeating a history story. My daughter loves it if I am reading everyday the same story to here: I am sure that I read the “Jungle Book” more than 100 times. The good thing about this is, I learned reading a new. At the beginning was reading very much stuttering and partly chopped off. But since I read the story so many times it became more and more fluent. I already new what will come next before I read it. In a sense the memory is trained. In some cases I only cross checked what I was reading. By now I have much more time to concentrate on the accentuation. Of course, as soon as I read something new I still have difficulties with that. But that also gets better every day. 

My main memory in the brain is still very fast occupied. If I e.g. format something in Microsoft Word and do some more things, then I recognize especially for some more complex thing that I get very fast to a limit. Operations on hold that are made of more than one step I only can manage if I do it in a series. So if I have a process which is accumulated from several steps in the manner “ABCDE”, then I have to start with “AB”, then continue with “BC”, then with “CD”, etc. In the last couple of month it became a bit better, but it surely is a bottleneck for me. The some problems as I have with parallel processing. 

In the meantime I got a bit further with adding numbers. Up to now I did the adding in the range between „-100“ and „100“. Now I have started to add values between „-1000“ and „1000”. The incremental is still between „1“ and „9“. The conditions are the same as before, just the range is a bit increased. 

In the meantime I have very much improved my writing. What still is very difficult to me is switching between large and lower case writing. If I write a text only in large or only in lower cases it is much improved. But as soon as I have to take care of writing lower and upper cases it always takes some time to switch between the modes.

At home we have a bicycle trainer. That is a lot of fun on and at the same time it trains brain and body. Training the brain is done by switch between different modes of the bike trainer. The bike trainer has an automatic mode where every fife seconds the mode of the display of the operation changes. So at first the training time is displayed like the following: 25:35, 25:36, this means twenty fife minutes and thirty fife seconds, then twenty fife minutes and thirty six seconds and so on. Then the driven distance is displayed such as 22:18, 22:19, this means twenty two minutes and eighteen seconds, then twenty two minutes and nineteen seconds and so on. Next are the driven calories displayed. And finally there is the heart rate shown. The good thing about this is that the formats of the results are different. The brain needs to switch between different modes. In a senses that is an optimal way. On the one hand my body gets trained and on the other hand my brain gets some exercise. Of course that is most simple, but I need to do two things at the same time. 

I started some time ago to name all things aloud. So I hear myself talking aloud terms like dog, cat, staircase, church and furnace pipe. Over several days I try to move to different places so that I can cover many different words with that method. By now it became quite good as it concerns the nouns. Some days I also write the name in letters as an exercise. However I am still searching for a method for verbs and adjectives. 

I was and I am still on the search for practicing my brain. In that process I came to the following method: learn recipes my heart. The good thing about this exercise is that you can do it in different levels of difficulties. At the beginning I did learn recipes that where only mode of a few words. By now things are getting more complicated. It requires much more capacity to store that all in the brain. 

As you notice, I am continuously searching for new exercises. Sometimes it doesn’t go with out new investment. Some of the exercise programs are very good and within some years got grown up. But if possible I try to pass around investment. I try to take situations from every day live and try do develop them further. That can be language exercises or exercises from math or many other things. On the one hand that does promote creativity and at the same time I also learn to make things completely. I have to think about how thing fit in and how everything fits together. So developing exercises it self is a good exercise.

Some games you need do play together, but some other games you can also play alone. The advantage of games that you play together, is the communication you need in order to play. You are talking and you are having fun. But that also has to be learned. I still have difficulties when several people play a game and are talking all together. Then in a couple of minutes I get tired. About that more in the next chapter. I am doing many games on my own, so e.g. Memory of question and answer games. During that games a question is asked and you have to answer it. So e.g. “What serves in detergents as a foam absorber?”. Then you have to answer the question. The answer here is: soap. The advantage of playing that game alone is that you then have all the time of the world to answer the question. 

How is he current status of things? In the last weeks or month many things have happened. I am very grateful for the fact that I am able to learn so many things. In all fields – math, writing and reading much things have happened. I am still being far away from normal, but I have made very good progress. As I said in math, writing and reading much things have happened. Two modules which I still have difficulties with are the parallel thinking and my limited capacity for saving data in the memory. I still haven’t found a way to fully restore that limitation. Of course it has improved a bit, but I am still waiting for some bigger steps. But again I have to say that I am very, very, very happy about everyday which I am allowed to experience. 

At some places I still have problems with numbering. As long as I am counting in my thought, everything is ok. Of course it is still very exerting, but overall everything is ok. But as soon I am counting the numbers aloud I run into trouble with some numbers. That is especially the case with the numbers “3”, “4” and “9”. In my mind I have the correct number e.g. the “4”. However if I say the number aloud I get in this case the “5”. In my brain everything goes ok with the number “4”, but as soon as I am numbering aloud I have this error. Strange thing here. At the moment I am trying to move my speech module to the right place. I have to look how long it takes! 

I think I understand what happened to me with the clearly pronounced numbers. As long as I am only thinking it is not a problem, but as soon as I have to pronounce numbers aloud then I am running into trouble. As I am saying this could be, it does not necessarily have to be the reason. I only did really practice numbers at the beginning. But really only at the beginning I did learn, write and understand numbers. Then after a while I only was speaking number aloud, but no longer writing. Ok, lets see what happens if I also do the writing again. Was it the reason?

Enumerating “ABC” becomes better and better. I have started to enumerate the “ABC” in different sequences. What do I mean with that? I do the “ABC“ in different sequences. I start with “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz“, that is the standard variant. 

Then I skip some characters like: 
"acegikmoqsuwy" or
"bdfhjlnprtvxz" or
“aeimouy” and many further variants.

Omitting the characters is not coincidental, but made to a certain pattern. Sometimes I take only the third character (“ace…”), sometimes I take the fifth character (“a,e,i…”), and so on. Sometimes I do not start with “a” but e.g. use “b”. Sometimes I start in reverse sequence, sometimes I start with small or large characters or sometimes I use mixed characters. Thereby I have learned to write different sequences. Especially at the beginning it was very hard to me to write different sequences. Already doing a reverse sequence like “zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba” was difficult. In the meantime everything improved very much. 

I already have mentioned counting several times. No question, it becomes better and better. Also the number ranges are in the meantime very far expanded. But it is still far away from being automated. I still must search until I found the correct number. I notice that it can be done much, much faster, but it still costs me a certain effort. I am sure that this will take some more time. But it is important that it becomes better from day to day.

It is amazing of how much a text chances when the line space is changed. At the moment I have problems when I read and write text if I choose as font “times roman” and have a regular line spacing (line spacing 1). This is very prominent when I am reading. Especially if I am not concentrated when reading I have problems where I am right now in a line. If the line spacing is set to “2” everything goes quite well (this is twice the size of normal). Those are often only little things, but then reading goes without problems. At the moment I started to reduce to.

If I write some text, I sometimes notice after a while that I read something completely different from what I actually should have read. Surprisingly this is especially the case with relative short words. If I read the text, I read the first syllable exactly, but then I try to complete the word with only a few characters very fast. At this point I only complete a few characters. It occurs then however more frequently that I did not correctly finalize the word. The selected characters are correct, but I finalized the word with the wrong characters. But here as well I recognize that everything is improving over time. Important is for me that I keep concentrated, learn different words to complete my language and try to avoid simple errors. 

The more addends I have in a calculation, the more the calculation gets difficult for me. Thus 15+32 still is relatively simple, 62+24+62 is already more difficult. If calculations are always made with the same operational sign, it is still ok for me. However, as soon as “point comes before line”, the hole thing is getting very confusing to me. 

In the last few months I have achieved very much in reading and writing. Especially the “memory area” which I can use has increased a bit. It is still far away from being normal, but did improve. Here, especially as what concerns writing, things have very much improved. While a few month ago I was busy a hole morning, to get a chapter of this section, I can now do it in 10 to 15 minutes. Also my vocabulary became larger in the meantime. While it was at the beginning almost an agony for me to write something, it is now a joy. 

Now it is time to lock this book. I will write now and then a status report. I would like to thank you for your interest in reading this. I have enjoyed writing this book for you. Cordial thanks for your interest!!!