Out of order today
1:18 PM IFTTT , WordPress 0 Comments

For three days now, I have been taking huge amounts of antihistamines, particularly Benadryl. The result? my brain is disconnected to the point of starting a short sentence and giving up halfway through because I forgot what I was going to say. I also can’t drive, and definitely cannot work, as whatever I say makes no sense to others.
This is a bit difficult for me, because when it happens, I have to cancel all my meetings and stay home. I can’t work from home because I don’t understand even simple e-mails. I can’t read because I can’t follow and keep starting the same paragraph over and over again. Basically, the only thing I can do is watch something on television, and still, it has to be something I had already seen, otherwise I can’t follow the story plot.
Benadryl makes me feel trapped in my own body. I know who I am and what I want to say, but what I end up saying is completely nonsensical. I am somewhere in La La Land.
It’s incredible to experience it, because I see things from a different point of view. I am amazed at how fragile our brain really is: One moment you are just fine, but then you add one chemical and you become almost completely disconnected. You know the information is there, but you can’t access it. It helps me understand (through living it) how people with Alzheimer’s or with dementia must feel.
I can’t imagine having this every day of my life, and knowing that it will only get worse as time goes by. At least for me it is a little holiday from myself, just a few days, then it’s gone.
It also shows me how much I value learning and knowledge, and how much I appreciate being smart. :) When I don’t have access to what I learned, and have to struggle just to understand something really simple, it helps me live and experience, for a few moments, being the one unable to understand things. For a teacher, this is incredible, because I can put myself in the shoes of students who are having trouble understanding, and explore from there (once I can think again) how our schools can better help these students. I relate back to what I needed when I was “benadryled”, and prepare teaching material that minimizes the impact to them. It is a really precious gift to be able to experience the needs of my students, rather than just learn about it in textbooks and observing the child. I actually feel the frustration of not being able to understand. It doesn’t matter how much you teach a student with a learning disability (it will just be a bigger collection of knowledge they cannot grasp). What matters is finding a way to connect, and to bring it all together. There is one school in Vancouver that does an amazing job at re-wiring the brain, it’s called Eaton Arrowsmith. I am so curious to learn more about how they do it, and what applications it can have in our schools. A lot of the work we do with the children prevents learning disabilities later on, and having that extra level of understanding would allow us to add that knowledge to our own curriculum.
So, yes, it is a gift, but when I am experiencing it as often as I do, the “gift” becomes a pain in the butt.
That’s all for today. Not sure if my e-mail makes sense, but here’s hoping I shared my experience in a way that will be helpful to others.
Back to my chemically induced La La Land :)