GEEKERY  
ADVENTURE  
CONTEMPLATION  

20120604

recovering, understanding, and honeydew

I've been recovering nicely from my concussion, and conditional on my doctor's permission, I'll be going back to work this week.  Lots and lots of folks have been incredibly nice to me with well-wishes and even gifts; I'm very grateful for everyone's thoughts and prayers.

Before this accident, and even when I first came to, I didn't really have a good understanding of how severe concussions can be.  Once I was able to remember the things N was telling me, I was like, A few hours ago, I used to think it was 2011.  How silly of me--I'm so glad I'm better now.  Lots of people get concussions, especially kids; almost everyone I've talked to has either had one or someone close to them had had one at some point.  Like anything, though, there are different degrees, and I came to realize that my accident was on the medium-to-severe part of the spectrum.

It's like comparing a freshly sharpened knife to an old dull blade; I had no idea a week of recovery would make this much difference.  All I did the first few days was watch mind-numbing TV shows--America's Got Talent and Gilmore Girls--and was completely enthralled.  N and I watched Star Trek First Contact one night, and I got so excited by the scene where they put on space suits that he had to turn it off.

I'm still overwhelmed by some things, especially crowds of people, which aren't exactly my forte when I'm well.  I'm also more sensitive to my migraine triggers.  But all in all, I'm feeling much closer to normal than I was a week ago.

One of the things this experience taught me was a better understanding for people with certain mental challenges: either those with low IQ or those with mild mental disorders.  A short experience obviously cannot compare to a lifetime of struggle, but it gave me a glimpse into the frustration of knowing that you're limited or not being in total control of your mind.  All I can say is that I respect people with mental challenges so much more now.

I've been trying to ease back into things.  The progression has gone from TV to video games to reading.  A few days ago, I decided to test my scripting skills.  What I needed was a way of sending reminders to N of the various things that he needs to get done.  This was especially important for this summer, when I see N less because of my internship, and doubly important now that I don't feel like I can trust my memory as much, at least for a few more weeks.  Someone once called this kind of spouse-to-spouse list a "honeydew" list, and that name stuck for this mini project.

I use OmniFocus to keep track pretty much everything in my life, so I wrote an applescript based on this one to grab all incomplete tasks from OmniFocus with the context of things assigned to N.  Then, I used python's smtplib to send an email if there are any incomplete tasks.  Glue it together with a bash script and tell cron to run it every day at 10am and 4pm, and you get an auto-reminder for the honeydew list.  There may be better ways to do something like this, but this is what was easiest for me.

After putting that together, both of us craved honeydew, so we got one and downed the whole thing in a half hour.  Life is beautiful.