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Hemi Blog

He hadn’t imagined a hemi blog as an immediate continuation of the hemi stories, perhaps nothing more at all. Till he met Jem on the Brixton Rec stairs.Yet another “fate impossible”.

They’d previously met 30 years ago. It was at Jacaranda, the first of Brixton’s now mass of café/restaurants. Except then it was a crazy response to Brixton’s “riots”, everyone else dreaming of getting away. At least not Jem, one of the regulars, while he, no chef, was cooking everything from everywhere day and night.

The point here, however, is Jacaranda’s kitchen as earlier on, quite likely hemi unique. His half-eyes could see the entire kitchen on his left side as if I wasn’t there, even looking out at the market, while my right hemi blank side was invisibly up against the kitchen wall. Yet still so naïve even after 12 years with me, it took him another 10 to realise that, if I’d been a left hemi, he’d have hardly seen the stove. Complete disaster.

Back to the present, he remembers Jem had been in computers. Asking him if he still is, now asking for advice, Jem immediately offers to do what he could never imagine of himself, setting the hemi stories alive with the future already arrived.

 Aims

He wishes he could change from the usual, yet it’s still “aims and objectives”.

And at first it may sound there’s been little change from hemi awareness to hemi promotion. Not so. Hemi awareness was all about me for lack of any other hemi. If this continues, he’ll have wasted everyone’s time.

In addition, his original hemi ignorance had restricted his non-visible disabilities awareness to hemis, hardly remembering his own. Now he has and well beyond.

FORMAL

Objective 1

His first objective is the catch-all, the upfront responses to what’s starting to happen – perhaps?

And adding to the challenge, Jem’s reminding him that hemihalf-eyes are in today’s reality world with Facebook and the others. When he enrolled on Beginners’ IT, he’d survived only a class and a half spent searching for the cursor hiding in the vast emptiness of the screen. Sadly, nothing much has changed nor ever will it due to me.

Yet fate again. Shortly after this hemi disaster, it set him up with a centre enrolling 1,000 students a year, naturally including Beginners’ IT.

Objective 2

Not that he should be waiting for responses alone. He’d learned in the hemi main story that the prime cause of hemis is stroke, followed by brain tumours. So, why not start introducing me to organisations that provide support to hemi colleagues with one or the other, meeting hemi colleagues yourselves at last and learning from your experiences. And remembering your condition is long term, his short as fully drained.

It so happened that most of his working life’s been in the voluntary sector, including setting up a charity and acting as an interplay between professionals and locals with other concerns and conditions. Now, can he contribute in some way using me, or perhaps advise him with the hemi blog?

Objective 3

In an everyday life, he’s had an unusual mix of experiences of the best and the worst, Paradise Losts 1 and 2 dominant.

Briefly - his brain had blown on Uki, a tiny island in the South Pacific without anything medical, almost nothing at all. Which meant he had to work out for himself what had happened when he knocked over some stacking chairs against another my right hemi blank side wall. He turned his eyes – presumably by now half-eyes - to his left side, then his right, double-checked and it must mean he had something seriously wrong with him. Horror, then even a smile. He hadn’t come all that way to complain about a headache. It was the origin of his “no big deal”.

He has no further recollection of me during his five months of lifesaving after being told he had something seriously wrong with him besides his abscess. In the end, he left “the London” proud of having had an abscess, almost as good as forgetting about me. Yet at the same time, being forced back here due to the abscess was as if life had already come to an end at 22.

Much later, computers for him were fate at its worst since his abscess. Look at File and he couldn’t – can’t - see anything else, or the cursor was rushing around all over the place while he could – can - see a quarter or less across the screen. There’s vastly more to it than that in Paradise Lost 2 and it took him years of “do-it-yourself” therapy to convert the horror into the hemi stories.

Yet out of it have come his three “discoveries” - my blank hole, hemi instinct’s cricket match and “Chirpy’s horizontal”, along with 300 plus hemi images and the Hemi Issues that include to Explain or not to Explain?  He still hasn’t found them on Google.

Objective 4

Objective 4 asks him what’s he been up to, hopefully you next time.

He starts by introducing his own non-visible disabilities – very mild epilepsy left over from his abscess, no hearing at all on my right hemi blank side and periodic mistakes with letters, words and numbers, probably also due to the abscess as for a time he couldn’t communicate, though odd turning up 30 years late and not identified in a scan. For the record, his age. Incredibly, none of them has been disturbing him much so far.

His struggle with his bank must be a struggle for other colleagues with a hemi or without, railway companies now planning the same. More shortly, for the moment asking how on earth can he be expected to relate to the bank online?

And only recently has he become aware of what he calls to Explain or not to Explain? His best example, being asked to help with the children’s outing. “Of course.” Except he’ll be unable to see all the children all the time due to me, impossible on my right hemi blank side close up. So, say “sorry, I mustn’t for the children’s sake”. And, reasonably enough, other parents will be annoyed – “what nonsense about a right homonymous hemianopia”. A hemi “lose” “lose” whichever way.

Now, fate at its most absurd. He was told he had cancer, then he hadn’t, now he has again, now he hasn’t. After all fate’s “impossibles”, he’s almost disappointed. Cancer would certainly help hemi promotion, a hemi story to the end. And cancer on the NHS against a brain abscess on medical free Uki completely on his own – except, of course, for me……?

 Building the Hemi Community

Though fate’s only been using extremes and “impossibles” to wake him up to possible alternates to the everyday, trying different approaches to “the usual”, even coming up with something new.

He’d never have treated me quite as he does if I’d been introduced in a hemi clinic, nor would he have “discovered” what he may have done. Perhaps try personalised aspects of the hemi main story after a hemi clinic along with some hemi images as a start. Then hemi colleagues. Can he join in?  

INFORMAL

He’s been going on in his mind to avoid talking about himself unlike previously. Though perhaps call these germinating, hoping for later, this first one already years late.

Perpetual Beginners’ IT?

His own greatest challenge is, inevitably, coping with his hemi computer phobia – now computers, mobiles, smart phones, online, a new product every other day and making him feel ever more disabled. With the hemi stories finished, perhaps he’s no excuse for not learn the basics that everyone’s taken for granted he’d grasped years ago – and showing off on the bus?

My Rewiring Hemi Companion

An extension of Paradise Lost 4, his getting letters, words and numbers mixed up. Leaving aside the problems his mistakes can cause – ultimately, his number mistakes were the cause of Paradise Lost 2 – some fascinate him. His mind orders a word, only for an alternative to be delivered instead. According to Paradise Lost 4, there’re as many as 11 mistake options. Again with the hemi stories finished, he’s the opportunity to take this further, for example fly-poster instead of subtitle. Then perhaps he’ll meet a colleague with an experience like his?  

Sharing Identity?

When I turned up and he had to introduce me, he would awkwardly laugh and refer to my name as the joke in the Christmas cracker. Yet what about the non-visible disabilities with names that can’t be read even without a right hemi, such as his accidental (?) cancer - Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia.

It’s all about the name, hardly the condition, least of all the colleague who has to live with both, the disability most likely as extreme as the name. Therefore, why not a periodic gathering of colleagues who live with them - greetings, support, learning from each other, a common identity and recognition, promotion as well. And his apologies again if it’s already happening.

Alternative Therapists

“Mum” did more than anyone to get him going again after Paradise Lost 2. She listened, understood, told him he could.

And it’s not just a cat or a dog. If restricted to bed, there’s the squirrel up its special tree, a bird, perhaps a painting or poem. For a time during his abscess, he couldn’t communicate except for three syllables first thing in the morning and in the afternoon after a sleep, only four times with pauses in between each. They were soothing, reassuring, he was still connected with the rest of the world. He missed them after operation 4 started my hemi rewiring. He was disappointed not to have said “thank you” and “goodbye”. What are your experiences?

FINAL FINAL ENDING

See more next time. Yours as well.