Today was my first visit to the occupational therapist. I will be seeing her 2x a week for an hour each time. I will also be seeing a speech therapist 2x a week.

The appointment was wonderful but exhausting. I have homework, including keeping a pain journal (for my headaches), getting and using a pill box for my meds (sleep aid + allergy meds). I am allergic to most pain meds, so those are in a separate category. I also have to bring and use a daily planner from now on. There is something else, but I can't remember (written down in a special OT folder). We are going to develop a monthly plan of action.

She explained to me the issues that I have with speech versus written language and ASL (my best friend of 30 years is deaf). Written language and ASL are visual languages, which use different pathways than the oral language. This helps explain some of my word-finding, stuttering, speaking with starts, stops, weird phrases, backwards speaking and such. I just struggle to get the words from brain to mouth, although brain to paper (with slow time and editing) is easier. How terribly reassuring! I seem to speak in ASL style (verbally) i.e. "shirt red beautiful" (stuttering through each word) instead of "that's a beautiful red shirt."

It was explained that I have road blocks and have to find ways to work around. Thank goodness my wife was there to remember and explain things to me. Saw my doctor afterwards.

today was a huge brain drain day, especially when it followed a sugared hyper kid day yesterday. At least the doc and therapist could see me at my lowest functioning and can now see how bad it can get.