March 16 -2009 I returned to Cox South Hospital Outpatient where Dr. Workman performed my six month angiogram.  Everything was exactly as expected.  No new Aneurysms and my current Aneurysm has healed normally.   So why doesn't that news make me feel better?  I feel as I imagine Neil Armstrong must have felt when he arived back on earth after having stepped on the moon, "What now"?  I jokingly tell people I feel like Rip Van Winkle, on September 9th I went to sleep still a man of value and awoke on September the 19th old, worthless, and unable to do what I could before. I am having a lot of difficulties with my memory and concentration which is causing me a lot of work issues and lost revenue.  If you remember at the top of this page where I was speaking about 50 percent die and another 25 percent die later and I was one of the rare lucky ones in the remaing 25% that survive and appear to be normal?  Well reality has now proven that I am far from normal especially when it comes to my ability to work.  I continue to run up against this reality over and over.  For example, I was punching down some network cable terminations last week at an apartment complex about a mile from my office and I received a phone call that required me to return to my office for a brief moment.  When I returned to the apartment complex I couldn't find my tools. I retraced all my steps and then after about an hour of frustration and some emotional moments, and this is certainly new for me, I think the last time I cried was in 1992 when my best friend died in a vehicle accident, my years in law enforcement harden me but now I sometimes feel lost and alone when I get frustrated and I cry, this was one of those moments. I decided to give up and go back to my office.  I found my tool kit setting at my back door.  I had no memory of taking it back to my office nor did I have a reason.  I do these kinds of revenue costing things several times a week and I now worry if I will be able to continue to earn the money I need in order to afford my health care insurance and other needs.  I am sure this is common and there probably isn't anything I can do but at the encouragement of a two time cancer survivor friend I have started keeping a journal, and I sent a copy to my primary doctor and my doctor in Springfield.  My Springfield doctor actually told me that I was probably being harder on myself than I should be and I am certain he is correct but my concerns are real because I am seeing it in my bottom line and I am certain he isn't going to be easy on me if I can't pay his medical charges.  I can't earn as much revenue as I did before my aneurysm because I have to spend so much time double checking my work and many times redoing it.  This isn't being hard on me, this is my new reality.  My Springfield doctor also told my wife after my Angiogram that I should play games and exercise more to get more blood to my brain and work my brain to built new pathways and again I know he is right but after a frustrating day redoing my work and worry about if I will be able to continue to earn a living, when I get home all I want to do is go to bed and try to escape in sleep.  I suspect this is some of the depression I was warned about. Even sleep is NOW more difficult because about three weeks ago my family started causing me some difficulty, not my wife and children but my mother wanted to make some changes to her estate that would put it at risks.  The last thing I need now is to have my mother's property be taken from her because of a foolish mistake and since my signature was needed to complete this reckless scheme I was put in a position where I had to refuse.   Since I find myself waking up after 5 to 6 hours of sleep and I am unable to return to sleep.  I do have an appointment with my primary care doctor this coming Monday so I am sure he will do his best to try to appease some of my worries and difficulties. Surprisingly one of my best sources of information and support is a dear friend of mine that I worked with when we were at the Sheriff's Department.  His daughter was involved in an accident with a drunk driver about ten years ago and he saw first hand how brain injuried people recover.  He has actually warned me about this is a phoen conversation right after I got out of the hospital but I thought I was doing so much better that I kind of dismissed it.  I should have paid more attention because he is a wealth of knowledge and many of the things he tells me that he experienced with his daughter's recovery does provide hope with a healthy does of reality.  Remember the network cable punching I was working on last week?   I should have completed that job in a few hours, but a week later I was still struggling so I hired someone to come in and complete it for me.  I still had 2/3 of the job left to do and the person I hired not only completed it in 3 hours but he also went back over my 1/3 that I had completed and he had to redo about half of my work because I had done it wrong.  This is my new reality.  My ole Sheriff's buddy explained it to me far better than anyone else including my doctors.  He said while I still knew how to do the work, when I ingage in work because my brain is still healing it will not always allow me to have access to my resources for more than a mintue or two as it takes away from the resources I need to do my work to continue to heal its self.  As someone who works with and on computers daily, I now understand.  How many times have you watch the hourglass on your Windows PC, you wanting to do something but your computer is busy doing something else?  I have no control over this, this could go on for another 18 months and even then may not get better and that is why when I sometimes drive to a store and find myself standing bewildered in the store trying to discover why I am there and how I got there.  My brain takes over and uses my resources for its own healing purposes and leaves me in lala land.  This all makes sense to me, but given I am self employed how do I make a living during the 18 to 24 months that my brain works on healing itself? And if I dont' improve, if this is as good as it gets what then?  Did I get this second chance at life to spend it in poverty because I can't work?  One has to wonder what good is all our great medicine if one is left far worse off?  It is about living and surviving, it is about quality of life and if I am left broke and living under a bridge how am I better off?  These are the things that worry me the most now. In the network cable punch down job, I had to hire someone to complete the job that I wasted at least 10 or more hours trying to do.  Imagine that if you became injuried your boss required you to come to work but guess what, you don't get paid because your boss is having to pay someone else to do your work.  That is the boat I am in which I suspect that it the boat most brain injuried Americans are in.  We have all these mandatory safety features in our cars and and in our work place, and we have some of the best life saving doctors and hospitals in the world but after the patient is saved, he or she faces a life of poverty because they can't work or earn a living how is this better?  This is the hard reality that I am starting to discover on the road to recovery.  Even in America, life can still be hard. Because of Dr. Workman's recommendation I have increased my exercise.  I have been doing 30 minutes a day on the treadmill.  I am at least lucky enough to have one of these in my office and since I can't seem to do anything else, I certainly have the time or at least for now, but I don't know how much longer I will have an office.  I have also been playing Concentration from a website on the Internet.  I never was a game playing, not even as a child, so I find this boring but I look at it as a nasty tasting medicine, it is something I have to do.  I will see on Monday what suggestions my primary care doctor has for me.