Oliver Zangwill Again - Day 3

Well, this has been by far the most interesting day to date. Today I spent most of the day with Fergus, a neuropsychologist at OZC. It was interspersed with a trip into Ely to test how I get on with giving directions, finding out information and shopping (unsurprisingly I can do all these things just fine) and some more cognition tests including basic maths (I knew that maths degree would be handy in the end!) and some general knowledge testing.

Anyway the discussions with Fergus were fascinating. Something which I realise I've not talked about much here before is that I have been having serious problems with noisy social environments. In particular there was an incident at the Cambridge Blue early in the year, and most significantly, an episode at a BBQ in May where we left quickly because I was feeling "odd" and in the car on the way home I felt tearful and, briefly, fell asleep. There have been other incidents too at pubs and restuarants, although not quite as traumatic. Fergus suspects that what may been happening at that May BBQ and perhaps at earlier events, is that I may have been having a seizure. Not a full blooded tonic as I've had before but some other sort. He's going away to read up on this some more.

However it's not as simple as that. He's suggesting that on other occasions, like yesterday at the party, I might be getting messages from my "pre-conscious" reminding me of the earlier incidents, which then unsettles me. It might therefore be possible to re-programme my way of thinking to cope with this. It's all scary stuff, and I fear a lot of what he said I only poorly remember, but it's the first real ray of hope in this process - that there may be ways of improving the mess left by the damage to my brain "simply" by thinking about it in the right way.

We discussed some other problems areas too and again we thinks this sort of re-programming - thinking my way around the issues I'm having - may help improve the situation.

Finally we tried some relaxation stuff, which I've done informally myself when I've been having problems in Sainsburys, but we did it for a lot longer, more like fifteen minutes. And that cleared the tightness in the back of my head, which I was having at the time (and indeed had most of the day while talking to him as it was hard work).