In December 2007, Lex received a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and for a number of years consequently scaled back much of his online activity.

Late 2011 update: I’m cautiously optimistic after a few months of EEG biofeedback. If it sticks, I might be past the worst of it, and I hope to rejoin the great conversation as soon as my creative output ramps up and/or when I have some big news to share…

2012 update: Obviously well enough to create new, publishable work again (cough, Eagle Award, cough). And now confident enough to start performing again.

If they ever make a Lifetime TV movie out of my life, these will be the boring years best summed up by a montage.

Frequently paraphrased questions:

What happened?

Car accident in December 2007. (It’s March 2010 as I write the bulk of this.)

Is that why your face is so horribly disfigured?

Um.

How has it affected you?

Well, I was never dedicated to film acting enough to move out to Los Angeles, and I guess I never considered myself “leading man” material anyway, so–

Your brain, not your face.

Right. The big things, still lingering after two years: I have difficulty focusing for long periods. I can’t reliably predict my energy levels from one day to the next. I have difficulty multithreading (keeping more than one thing in my head at the same time). And my attention to detail isn’t where it needs to be, especially important with the writing. It’s like a concussion that takes its time going away, and I’m thankful to be spared from any personality changes or emotional issues. Also death.

Are you still working?

Yes. Just not as fast and not as well and for not as much money as I used to. I’ve figured out ways to create optimal conditions so I can function pretty normally on most days, though with a less interesting life of the mind than I’d prefer. Still got plenty of projects I’m making progress on, though they usually have less complexity and scope as what I was working on before the accident. I’m hesitant to take on any acting projects until I’m sure fellow filmmakers and thespians can count on me more consistently. (Update: I’m performing again.)

Have you noticed any improvement since the accident?

Yes. Very gradual. And it’s not linear. For the first eighteen months or so I couldn’t read more than a few paragraphs at a time without needing to take a break and/or forgetting what I’d read. I can now read a few pages in one sitting. And I’m pretty sure my memory has gotten better. Otherwise, since I have good days and bad and good weeks and bad (and periods of lucidity while on drug therapies and/or medicinal amounts of caffeine) it’s kind of hard to track.

For a while I was comparing my brain to the stock market: daily ups and downs, but if you take the long view it’s usually a fairly reliable upward climb. Which, before the recent world economy disaster, might have suggested a much more positive an attitude than it does now. I’ve only recently come up with a few ways to measure my progress more objectively. I should have some good moving average data to examine by mid 2010.

Any positive side effects to the injury?

My understanding is that when one side of the brain is damaged but the other isn’t, that’s when you get superpowers like heightened sense of smell or perfect pitch or the ability to come up with third examples. But because I was knocked unconscious, my brain was likely struck at least once per side: first by the impact of the crash, and second when the brain bounced off the opposite wall of my skull, which means there’s less of a specific deficit for which one side can compensate the other. And I think I already had the proportional strength of a spider, so no. Nothing.

So when will you be better?

Don’t know. The brain’s a tricky thing. IIRC more than 90% of people fully recover from their mTBI within the first year, and this must be just one of the many ways I’m special. At first it was “could be days, could be weeks.” Then it was “could be weeks, could be months.” Right now we’re at “could be years,” with that annoying possibility that this is my life from now on. But there’s no advantage in considering or preparing for that. From what I understand, I’m not going to wake up one morning and be fully recovered. I’m going to gradually, almost imperceptibly get better at things, and it’s my goal to get in better shape mentally, physically, and, um, achievemently than I was before the accident.

No advantage in assuming you won’t get better? That’s a weird thing to say. You’re weird. And you smell weird.

I actually think it’s pretty reasonable. I just divide the future into two broad foodgroups: I will get better or I won’t. And I divide my choices into: I’ll assume I will get better or I assume I won’t. That gives me four major possible futures :

1. I won’t get better, and I’ve assumed I won’t get better, so I’ve let my body and mind rot with inaction. [Net negative result.]
   
2. I won’t get better, even though I’ve assumed I would. Joke’s on me, because I’ve wasted all this time and effort ttrying to stay socially, mentally, and physically active and I’ve even tried to accomplish things when I could have just bought a PlayStation and retired to the couch for the rest of my life, or at least until they shut the power off and/or my wife leaves me for someone smarter. [Net negative result.]
   
3. I will get better even though I’ve assumed I wouldn’t. Great news outside my control, but now that I’ve fully recovered from the brain injury I now have to lose even more time recovering from years of inaction (health, career, and otherwise). [Net negative result.]
   
4. I will get better, and I’ve prepared for it. When my brain has healed, I’ll have pushed myself into excellent shape so I can actually use it. And while the injury will have slowed me, I actually will have accomplished a thing or two during the “wait.” Thus I’ve lost a minimal amount of time due to the head injury. [Net positive result.]

If I assume a bad result, I’m guaranteed a bad result (and I’ve had plenty of days that prove that true). If I assume a good result (and act upon it; this isn’t some mystical power visualization attraction grabby thing), I have an actual chance of a happy result. And I’m sure my friends will appreciate it if I did something about the smell.

What are you doing about it?

Mostly maximizing my chances at a full recovery and figuring out ways to compensate for current problems. So I continue to read and write every day with varying degrees of success. I exercise even more than I used to. I’ve found that I need to optimize my eating and organizational habits, or else I simply can’t function. I’m learning new things (juggling, fourth edition D&D, actually picking up musical instruments for the first time in years) and pushing myself constantly, because keeping socially, mentally, and physically active seems to be what gives neuroplasticity the best fighting chance. I’m also interested in longevity for the first time in my life. Since both my father and his father died in their early fifties, I’ve always assumed that as an endpoint, and anything I wanted to do I should probably get to before then. Now I find myself thinking a side effect of this healthy living is I might be able to extend my life by the number of years I’m “losing” to recovery. Not that I’m sitting still.

Have you tried drugs?

Some (under close guidance of a doctor, thank you). Most of them actually helped in the short term, but, even when taken at 5AM, they’d continue to stimulate the brain far past midnight and make sleep impossible, and that sleep deprivation canceled out any benefits after day 3 or 4 on anything. And my withdrawals got pretty bad, so I wouldn’t want to go on and off of them regularly. Some I tried could also make me a bit overconfident and/or annoying, to put it mildly. So I’ve probably got a lot of people to whom I should apologize for being all weird at various times over the last few years, but (perhaps thankfully), I don’t remember what all I’ve done to whom and with what household cleaner.

Have you tried…

Probably, but thanks for the suggestion. The only things I haven’t considered as seriously as I’d like are neurofeedback and hyperbaric therapy, because they’re priced a bit high. Also we don’t have the space for a ping pong table, which I understand is excellent for the brain (not kidding). But we’ll figure it out. It’s possible that patience and healthy living are all I really need for a full recovery and everything else I’m doing isn’t going to make more than a tiny bit of difference in speed or degree of healing, but I don’t know how to do nothing.

When will you resume blogging?

Not anytime soon. Even as I was posting fewer entries since the accident, I think I was repeating myself a lot, because I didn’t have a good handle on what I’d already said and when. A more static page I can update as needed works better for me right now. More importantly, I have a limited number of “brain bucks” to spend each day, and I was a slow enough writer even before. I had what we used to call an “online journal” from 1998-2009, mostly for the purpose of promoting the writing I sold, and usually with the anticipation that my “big break” or “break through” or “big through” was just around the corner, whatever that meant. And the injury has helped me let go of that assumption. While I’m still sending stuff out at a slower pace, Facebook and Twitter now more than fulfill that need to get the occasional news item out.

Did you have to delete your old blog, though? There was one or two interesting things in there. Spread out over 10+ years, but still.

I had to recreate my sites after a move to a different server and different management platform, sorry. There are a few items I’ll be reposting, especially pages that are more heavily referenced on other sites. I’ll add links to them to the “Miscellany” page. I should probably add an RSS component back to the site, though, huh?

Have you considered turning all this brain injury stuff into a story?

Turning what brain injury stuff into a story?

What do you recommend for others recovering from an mTBI?

Try to keep socially, mentally, and physically active. Otherwise the best I can do is point people toward a book I found by sheer luck (researching a science fiction brain story in the library): Brainlash by Gail L. Denton. Almost everything I’ve learned in the last two years was directly or indirectly through this book. Even the typeface and linespacing are designed for the shorter attention spans of people like me, and until recently this was the one (non-audio) book I’d been able to get all the way through since the accident (not that I’ve retained much; might have to start it again this week). So if you have an mTBI or PCS (post concussion syndrome) and most other resources you’ve found are understandably dedicated to more severe brain injuries, this might be the book you’re looking for.

I also recommend a smartphone (which has helped me stay organized), Evernote, a good task management system (GTD or Zen to Done are good places to start), meditation, and a supportive spouse. And having a good sense of humor, or, in absence of having a good sense of humor, what’s worked in my case: having a sense of humor.