Hartwig's Story Part 5

In Cogpack I have been comparing sentences and characters. This is done the following way: The two sentences are presented side by side. They can be the same or they can be different. In this example the two sentences are different.

Overall the comparison, its speed and reliability improve. In some of the cases the comparison is for me very difficult. I can’t see it on a glimpse. It take relatively long to compare this:

This time numbering with another variant. Numbering with a decimal number. If I count while I am in my thought or when I read then I run into trouble. To be able to illustrate this the following example: I count 3.54, 3.55 and so on. In German I then run into trouble. Let's take the number 3.54. We have to begin with the "3", then we have the "." and now the difficult part. Now in speech or when thinking there comes the "4" and then the "5". If we put that together we have "45". I have already written about the difficulties when reading numbers. Putting now a "." into the line is just going a step further. 

If I now have the money at the table and have to handle the numbers, then it is going quite ok. At the beginning of my sickness I always ran into serious trouble. To avoid this I was always paying with a 50 Euro note. So I avoided to get blamed. Now in the meantime everything is going quite ok. On the one site I recognize how long it takes to learn something an again, but on the other site I also see the progress I make. 

And another game ...

I took soft toys of my daughter. It is no problem for me to recognize then all by sight. But as soon as I have to give names to the puppet I am running into problems. I mean names like this: this is a frog, this is a seal …. In a sense it is already on my tongue, but I don’t have access to it. I know that I have named it earlier, but as I say I don’t have access to it. This in not a topic if you forget one or two words. But for me that is an enormous amount of words is missing or I don’t have access to it. For some of the words I can’t get access to them, but for many word I can finally get access to them. Of course after some seconds of minutes of thinking. 

I did a game together with my daughter. The task is to recognize things from the sound the make. The things are hidden in a box from the view. I didn’t think that it would be so difficult to recognize things by the sound they make. After some days things improve slightly. But still it was very interesting to me to learn how important sound is to manage the task. Once you have managed a set of boxes you can create new boxes with new sounds.

It still requires a lot of effort to remember Icons and their position for me. An example: I am looking for an Icon. After some search I find it. Then I do something else in the software. After one minute I need the Icon again. If I did this before my sickness I found the Icon in a glimpse of a minute. Now I have to search again. In some sense it is like I lost my positional memory. I have to start the search process again. And again. It takes weeks until I quickly can find the Icon in the software. But until then always the some game again and again. I have to look for the Icon, and look and look and can’t remember where it was. I still haven’t found a strategy how to improve this, make this faster. I am still searching for a new strategy to improve this.

Many things have improved in the last couple of weeks. Under certain circumstances I can do things in parallel. Of course this is all very limited, but alone the fact that it is possible makes me very happy. After some minutes I recognize that my working memory is completely crowded. Then I in a sense I have to press the reset button and I can’t to anything for half a minute. After that I can begin again. That is a great success!

In the last couple of days I started to learn numbers from “00” to “99” by heart. This will take a couple of days, but it should allow me to learn the numbers for automatic usage. Through that I would like to accomplish that my automatic understanding of numbers goes up to “999”. I hat already described that I had many difficulties with numbers. Let’s see whether this is going to work ….

Some days ago I had birthday. I was very happy and grateful about the many presents I received! … at that day the following happened to me: My mother said to me: Please open the birthday card. I fully understood the term, but I couldn’t remember what a birthday card is. I was trying to understand the term, but I couldn’t get the meaning. I had to ask my mother what a birthday card is. Then this connection was established again. Let’s see whether I remember it the next time (-:?

If I now try to make something in parallel with counting numbers, then I run into trouble. Counting with numbers is so exhausting to me that I cannot do anything else at the same time. But it is getting each day a bit better. Of course the development is going much slower than I thought, but it is continuously.  

It is about numbers ort he other way round, it is still about numbers. I thought about half a year ago that I had managed that. That is however still not the case. It is still a topic for me. It continues to improve slightly, but it is still for away from getting automatic. If I have to name a three digit number e.g. “237” then it goes the following way. The number “2” almost goes without problems. Then there comes the trouble with German. After the “2“, follows the “7“ and then finally the “3“. Thus it goes “2“, “7“, and the „3“.  As I said the “2“ doesn’t cause any major problems. But I very often exchange “7” and “3”. So basically I get the “273”. Now I think I found a solution for the problem for myself. I speak the second and third number as one number “37”. So I don’t have three individual numbers, instead I have numbers that form a kind of syllable. As a change I now have to learn 100 numbers to get this done, e.g. from “00” to “99”. That somehow seems to work for myself. I don’t know how other people do it. 

Yesterday I was looking soccer (football) on TV. There I again recognized that I hat serious difficulties to put things of different meaning together. I don’t have a problem to make a difference between the teams. At the same time I don’t have problems to remember the name of players. But as soon as I need to draw the conclusion that is team “A” and that is placer “XYZ”, then I am running into problems. I can’t put the things together in my brain. 

If I use the knife to cut something then I have to fully concentrate on that process. As soon as I do something on the site, the probability that I cut myself is rapidly increasing. If I e.g. think about something nearby it is getting dangerous for me (-:. In the meantime things became a bit better, but it is still far away from what I was used to before I became ill.

A thing which is still very difficult to me is the correct naming of knife, fork and spoon. I can use it correctly, but I run into problems with the naming. I e.g. have a fork. I do use it correctly, but I am running into trouble with the naming. I see a fork, but when someone asks me what that is, I say this is an "spoon". That is really a bit strange. I have to make a difference between three words and after 3 1/2 years I am still not able to do so. 

I am amazed by the fact that I still have trouble with defining colors. If I am concentrated I don’t have problems. But as soon as I get distracted I am running into trouble. We are at the moment talking about the basic colors black, white, red, green, blue and yellow. I am amazed a bit that such a simple task still makes such a lot of difficulties.

I is still very difficult for me to get information in one glance. We take as an example the control panel from windows.

Until I find there what I was looking for a lot of time goes by. If I e.g. read “Display“ I read it, but I don’t understand what I read. Only after reading it several times I get to understand what I read. If I then let the time go by for some minutes, then my understanding and the knowledge of the word “Display” is lost again. It is like it wasn’t there. In the meantime that all got better a bit, but it is still far away from what I was used to before my sickness.

Some time ago I borrowed from my daughter some of her kids toys. I is a very simple thing, but it is very efficient for me. Please look at the images about the task:

On the one hand is the naming of those things very efficient and on the other hand it is very efficient to learn the forms. For some of you all off this might appear very simple to solve this task, but for me it is very important to learn these basic things again.

Reading while jogging

While I was jogging in Berlin, I also read at the same time license plates of cars. That is of course only possible if there is no traffic. I was surprised how good that all went. Of course I had with some cars problems with reading the license plates, but overall the reading of numbers and characters went very well. Another step back into my normal life. When I did this the last time, I was only able to walk, but not to jog.

I found the following about the house pharmacy. It was less the thing about the house pharmacy, instead it was the difference between numbers and letters which is very important for me.  

1 g Protein
4,6 g Fibers
23 Calories
85 mg Natrium, international named as „Sodium“
315 mg Potassium
28 mg Calcium
9,4 mg Magnesium
0,01 mg Maganese
1,6 mg Iron
0,01 mg Copper
36 mg Phosphore
7 mg Sulfur
72 mg Chlorine
0,12 mg Zinc
12 mg Carotin or Provitamin A
8 mg Vitamine C
0,5 mg Vitamine E
0,9 mg Daukarine
0,06 mg Thiamine
0,06 mg Riboflavin
0,6 mg Nicotin acid
25 mg Pantothenacid
0,1 mg Vitamine B6
0,6 mg Biotin
10 mg Folacid

The typing was very arduous, but as well it was very helpful.

In the mean time reading and writing of syllables became much better. As well the ability to predict words from the first syllable has much improved. Still my lexicon is comparatively small. As soon I have to recognize a word from single characters it take some time until I really understand it. And the are still many words that I have to read character by character (-:.

I always had difficulties to name the correct site. But before I got ill, it was at a chance level. Now after my illness it seems like it was completely changed. Now I am at the 100% level. However not correct. Now I am always wrong with what I choose. Right is left and left is right. How can I correct this?

At some days when I can concentrate myself very well, everything goes quite well with reading and writing. But at some times I also have a hard time. I am desperately looking for words. I know that they are already in my brain, but I can’t access them. The same accounts for parts of sentences. I know they are in my brain, but I can’t access them. At those moments I recognize how fragile the whole thing is still. But here also accounts: I am getting better every day!  

At the moment I am reading more again. I already had described a while ago that I still have difficulties when reading a book. When reading a book I have very many difficulties at the beginning. After a while when reading a book, I get used to the style and the words the author uses. And then it is getting better and better again. Overall it is a sign for the fact that the number of words that are available to me is still very limited. As soon as I “get used to a book” the reading becomes much better. At the moment I read a book about “The Wonder World of Oceans”. This book is very, very interesting, but at the some time it contains a lot of words that I don’t know. Therefore at the beginning it is really hard to read for me. But with the time everything is becoming better again. The reading is getting more fluid now again.

When I now have to write on my PC my lessons it is quite good. Of course only the exercises but not normal writing. As soon as I am also responsible for the content of the text, I am running into difficulties. I now can write a prewritten text, but as soon as I have to do both, I am running into difficulties. I can either write or read, but both at the same time, I can’t manage. I am working to improve this!

Due to a change in our household I now write more on my computer again. It is amazing how rapidly things change in a short amount of time. Of course these are only lessons, but it is still amazing how things change in a short period of time.

I have managed another step. For the first time after my illness I drove on my own by train. During my illness I was always joined by my family. Now for the first time after my illness I went on my own by train, i.e. I went alone doing that journey. The journey was about 500 km distance. I have managed to do everything on my own. That is a really important step in my development!!!

I started again to work on different computers in „parallel“. The good and important thing for me is that I have to do different things on the computers. As I said, the important thing is that I have to switch between different contexts. Of course I could do both things on the same computer. But amazingly it takes very long for me to stitch between computers. It is just a couple of things which are different between the computers, but that is enough to get me into confusion.

If I increase the counter by a value of “1“ that is working much better than decrease it. Thus if I count “100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105 …” that is much easier than “100, 99, 98, 97, 96 …”.

It is still very difficult for me to write or read a negative number. Most probably this has to do with the switch between numbers and the “-” sign. The same accounts for decimal numbers as e.g. “123.25”. There is a dot sign in the numbers. Additionally there are the “problems” with numbering in German. It reads like this: „1“ and then „3“, then „2“, then the dot, then the „5“ and then the “2”.

And again numbers

I already thought that I did manage that. But that was a mistake. I still have difficulties with the speaking of German numbers. If I e.g. have to say „239“ then it is still very difficult to do this. If it is written then it is really “239”, but if I have to speak it in German then it is pronounced as follows: “2”, then you have to input a gap then there follows the number “9” and the number “3”.  This already has taken very long to manage that. Now I do a little trick. At first I write the number “2” and then I write the number “39” as one word. Thus it is then “two hundred” and finally “ninety and three”. Important for me was the step to “39”. Important form me was the step to the „39“. I started with „two hundred“, then virtually to „ninety and“ and finally the step to “thirty”. At the beginning I used three numbers in the correct order: “2”, then “9” and finally the “3”. Then it took me very long until I did a change in the emphasis to “ninety three”. It is b bit difficult to explain this, since German is very much different from English. The numbers in German are sorted in a different way. If you have a three digit number it is written as e.g. “239”, but is spoken as “2” then “9” and finally “3”. And the difference between spoken and written language makes it so difficult. Once you have learned that, i.e. you have automated that in your brain, this step goes by itself, but till then it is very difficult to get it done!.

I already mentioned the following a while ago. I still have difficulties if I have to write something that consists of numbers and characters. If I have written characters for some time then I recognize that it is very difficult for me to switch to writing a number. The some accounts for the other way round. Sometimes it is like not being able to switch between numbers and characters. If I e.g. speak for a long time using characters and then I would like to say “4”, I can’t do it. There I can’t remember the correct word. Instead I use the word “four” to get this done.

I still have difficulties to make a difference between left and right. For some things everything goes very well. But as soon as I have to read something at the same time my system breaks down. Today e.g. I tried to put the loudspeakers on my PC together. It is a set of five loudspeakers. The “task” was to connect the five speakers correctly. There was one main loudspeaker and the others were attached. The main loudspeaker had names assigned for each loudspeaker, so Left Front, Left Rear, and so on. I can read correctly. Not the fastest and best reading, but overall I can read correctly. But as soon as I had to read on one spot and then assign the correct loudspeaker on the correct place, my system broke down and I ran into problems. I think it took about ten minutes until I had ever loudspeaker at the correct place. It is a crazy world. I can name everything correctly, but as soon as I have to put things together correctly everything breaks down. That step was lost in my brain.

Automated Processes

It seems like I lost a lot of automated processes in my brain. I am not sure whether these are really automated processes or just well learned processes. If I e.g. have to cook coffee it now becomes every time coupled with a lot of mental work. When I had to cook coffee before I became ill, it all went automated and I had enough time to do something else at the same time. Now after becoming ill, I really have to concentrate on something and I can only do one thing at the same time. I have to go through every single step and not trying to get disturbed from my rhythm. As soon as I get disturbed it is very hard to get back into my rhythm. In the last three and a half years everything was becoming much better (the time when I become ill), but it is still far away from becoming an automated processes. In general the planning and the execution of processes became much better.

One year ago I started to write very intensively at the PC. I did a lot of courses on the PC. That all happened in the first half year of 2008. By the time I improved very much. Of course the speed was still very slow, but overall I thought that it was “ok”. At my best times I had a speed of 45 hits per minute. And now I got thee surprise. Today I placed myself at the PC and did one of the exercises for learning writing on the PC. And now I had from the scratch 140 hits per minute. At these moments I recognize what I have achieved in a year. This is just super!!!!

A thing which is still very difficult to me is the understanding of the world. This should become a bit more clearly by the following example. At the beginning the knowledge is split into several sub-categories. In our example this would be the cloth. Then we go a step farther, we go for shoes. No I can make a difference between different types of shoes, in that special case, shoes for my self. Now I can make a difference between different types of shoes. Now again a step further, we go for sport shoes. The next step is the color of the shoes. We still could make further steps. But this is sufficient for now for my example. As you can see, our knowledge is hierarchically organized. So now I am looking for a special type of shoes, sport shoes which are colored in black and blue. If I am looking for such shoes and I find them everything is “ok”. But as soon as I can’t find them, it is hard for me to go one step further and to search for a higher category, i.e. to search for sport shoes or even general shoes. Here I lack the more general association which does such kind of links. But here as well the important thing is that I have recognized this and now I can start working on this.

In the last couple of days I started reading what I wrote in the last year. Some things I always see from the some “corner”, i.e. I keep my opinion always the same. On the other hand it is striking how many things change over the time. Of course that is only human, but it still strikes me. This is especially the case with my very bad working memory. On the one hand there are things where I always have the same attitude. On the other site there are things which undergo a constant change. It is just getting more obvious due to my forgetfulness.

My last couple of weeks were filled with work on my web-pages. I have ordered my web-pages a new in including changes in color and form. I did work on the following web-pages: 

• www.vrtainment.de

• www.hartwig-distler.de

• www.ehegrund.com

• www.ezelheim.de

• www.aneurysma.org

It is still very difficult for me to get the concentration to the right point, but overall it is getting better and better every day. I am only improving in small things every day, but it is continuously becoming better. 

Counting numbers in the field between "0" and "999" is by now pretty good. But everything that goes beyond that is causing me many problems. Numbers with more than three characters are still causing me a lot of trouble. It is in Germany the case that the numbers are sorted in triplets. So first the one digit numbers, then the two digit numbers and finally the three digit numbers. The special thing about that is the somehow disordered numbering. "One-hundred and three-and-twenty" (123) you speak in German as follows: "One-hundred", then the "three" and then the "twenty". With higher numbers the game is always played in triplets. "234123" is the following way pronounced "Two-hundred-four-and-thirty-and-one-hundred-and-three-and-twenty". With numbers with more than three digits these still causes me a lot of problems. But I also think that this is just a matter of practice. More practice and I will do fine.    

It seems to become a never ending story. Again I have noticed that in certain situations I am running into problems. If I now count with an increase of one (1, 2, 3, 4…) it almost goes on its own. It is almost an automatism. But at the same time I am still surprised how long it takes too learn numbers fluently. Now I tried it in different intervals, thus 2, 4, 6 … and to my surprise it gets straining again. I need some time to get the correct number in my brain. During that time I can’t do anything else. No more brain resources left. I need to concentrate fully on the numbers to get everything correct.

In the last couple of weeks I again tried programming. First I began with HTML and then I added Javascript. The result of my attempts is an application that combines HTML and Javascript. The task was the automation of the visualization of HTML files. Please click here to see an example. One file is displayed in a big format, the rest of the files are then displayed in a small format. If then I click on a small file, it will be displayed large. It took me several weeks to get this all working. But now it is working! That is great!

I often have difficulties with activities which I made in former times in the “FF“. I still know that it must work, but I don’t know how it went. It concerns activities, which I could do before my illness from the “FF“, now however these parts of my brain was damaged. A good example is here, starting a tractor. I stand in front of the tractor and don’t know how to start it. Before my illness these knowledge was there. In the course of my illness these parts of my brain were destroyed. Only then you notice how difficult it is to learn thing again. The whole thing doesn’t solve itself in a couple of seconds, instead it take months or years to learn it again.

I was very busy in the last couple of weeks. I did restructure the VRtainment web-site in order to get it translated to German. It took me quite long to get to a good structure for the web-site in two languages. It was also very good to work with a lot of files at the same time. First I began to work with simple things. Only one working process at a time, but the some process over many files. After a while I started to increase the complexity of the working processes required to do the changes. Every day it is improving a bit. Small steps, but overall the work process is getting more fluent. The development is small, but clearly visible. 

Presently I do occasionally read cooking prescriptions. I read the prescription several times and then try to repeat it from my mind. A small example:

• 250 g butter

• 500 g flour

• 4 egg (it)

• 3 table spoons sugar

• 1 pinch salt

• 2 table spoons honey

• 1 tea spoon vanilla sugar

• 1 tea spoon baking powder

• 1 pinch cinnamon

• Fat to bake

• Powdered sugar

Preparation

Butter and sugars are creamy agitated. Then add the eggs. Gradually you give the flour mixed with baking powder under the mass and agitate everything well. From time to time again liquefy everything with some warm water, but caution, at the end you must develop a paste. Then you add salt, cinnamon and honey and you agitate everything well.

The waffle are baken in an iron.

At the end the waffles are covered with powered sugar and with cream and are then eaten.

Preparation time: approx. 30 min
Degree of difficulty: normally 

What do I expect to reach by this exercise? It is a good exercise to read. Moreover I must try to remember as much a possible. It is an exercise that makes sense, because the things all belong together. Thus it is harmonious. I normally have problems with exercises since I must invent something in order to practice. It is still very, very difficult for my too make such an exercise. But I also notice already after a few days that it is very helpful. 

It was a connection of several things when I became my aneurysm. At this time I was alone in my company. The days before that I had been working very long. On this day I had a professional meeting. I was going to the meeting on my bike. That was luck the first time. A few minutes earlier and I still would have been alone in the office. Then the whole thing happened in Berlin, thus the best emergency there. As I said, I had a huge, huge luck!   

No pain

If I cut myself I almost have no more pain. That property of my perception is nothing special for me, but it is at least worth to mention it. I often recognize only minutes later that I have been bleeding. Then I check weather something more urgent happened to me. That is especially with manual work the case. For example I sometimes knock my finger very hard, but won’t recognize it. 

Quite often I know that I know something but can’t remember what it was. Actually a large part of my daily routine consists of this. I know that I knew something but can’t determine exactly what it was. But only the fact that I am trying to remember something is very important. Then I try to move heaven and earth to get to a success full result. As I said already the fact that I remember something is very important. It is worse if you don’t even know that you forgot something. Then the whole knowledge is lost.

If I together with my daughter read or sing songs I am some times my self amazed of how good singing songs is working. All of a sudden texts and songs appear in my brain that I would have never managed to formulate on my own. All of a sudden I can remember whole text parts of songs. Normally my memory so still so week that I forget a sentence if I reach the end when saying it. But as soon as I sing a song with my daughter it goes like an automatism and everything is there again.

In the meantime our daughter is four years old.  For me it is amazing what and how fast a child learns. To some sense it is a small competition. Can I do it at the same speed? How do her learning strategies change? That is very useful that I can learn from her. I can learn from her what are useful strategies. I don’t need to do everything per trial and error. That helps me a lot. 

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I am still not able to program in C++. I believe that it has something to do with the structure of thinking as well with my problems with reading and writing. Reading and writing still makes complete use of my available resources. At the moment all my resources go into these processes and I don’t have any more resources left for programming. I think that it will take some more time until my reading and writing goes without any conscious effort. Only then I will also be able to program again. That’s at least my believe. 

Yesterday I have reported about my first experiences with my computer after my sickness. Today I would like to report my first experiences with the professional development software. After my disease I tried many times to start again with developing a software. But as far as it concerns C++ my development is not far enough to get this done. Instead I tried to start with HTML applications. Before my sickness I did a lot of HTML applications. I at least had some re-memberance for HTML, only a little but at least a good starting point. After some learning period I started with that web-pages about my sickness. The whole thing is still in HTML and not XML. But a beginning is made. Amongst other things my limited amount of my brain memory is a very critical factor. I can only understand small parts of the text at one time. At each moment I can only understand a small part of the text. Then I need to flush my memory to get an new part into my brain. But the important thing is that I recognize each day that everything is improving a little bit. Very slow improvements but continuously.     

I also do a lot at the VRtainment web-sites. In most cases this are only small changes. The good thing for me is that I am required to make repetitive changes. By doing this the whole thing gets into my brain. An example is e.g. making a change of a background image. I have to do this change about 50 times. After a while I get used to making that change. At the beginning the process is still very difficult, but after a while it gets an automatism. It is a good exercise. 

Each couple of weeks I then check weather I can program again in C++. So far I did not have any success. But I will manage that one day. 

In the last year I tried very much do get used again with working on my computer. I have to say that I spent very much time on computers before my sickness. That time I also used different operating systems. For the moment I have reduced it to windows. First I used Windows XP and a couple of weeks ago also Windows Vista. Getting Windows Vista to work was a very good exercise. I have to say that before my sickness I spent 10 or more hours per day on my computer. In the first half year of my sickness I didn’t use a computer at all. At that time I was very busy to get my live sorted again. Of course I had the restriction that my brain memory was very small. After a small period I started to use the computer again. At the beginning I mainly used Cogpack as a tool. The aim was not getting used to the computer again it was instead a tool to my therapy. My main memory is still very limited so I still have problems working with the computer. This makes it still very difficult to work with a computer. But I have finally reached a state where I at least can do a couple of things with my computer. A beginning is made and I have a lot of fun working with the computer.

In the meantime many things have improved substantially. For many things the improvement process takes very long. Sometimes you don’t even recognize that. For some processes it takes years until you recognize an improvement. A nice example for this is making coffee with a coffee machine. At the beginning of my sickness it was already very difficult to remember the individual steps. Getting disturbed by something usually meant that I had to start again. Today this improved very much. I can now plan things that happen in advance. It is still very difficult since my memory is limited but I have improved very much over the last couple of years. It is amazing of how many things a process is integrated when this memory is lost. And it is also amazing of how long it take to get this working properly again.