Thursday, September 5, 2024

Thursday, September 5, 2024

 

   Last night, I slept straight through from 9:30 to 4 am when I got up.  Before breakfast, I went out and picked up another bucket of haole koa trash from along the driveway and drove it down to Dean and Nina's.

   I finally found the courage to speak to Andrea, the receptionist/technician at the hyperbaric clinic. Most of my imagined dialogs didn't sound good. I was defensive; I get sarcastic when I'm defensive. Not a good look.   I felt the victimhood fall away and became a reasonable human being.  Shelly's support for my point of view probably did the trick. It allowed me to ask for what I wanted without being defensive and consequentially obnoxious.  I could calmly express my concerns and see if my fears were valid.  I was concerned she would say I had to fix the problem of my sensitive ears and newly developed claustrophobia. My issues with the hyperbaric made me the problem.  She didn't respond that way. 

   Andrea told me having problems with ear pain and fear were common. Concerning the pain caused by pressure on my eardrums and Eustachian tubes, she said she would adjust the pressure. As suspected, she had lowered the pressure when I complained of ear pain and maintained a low pressure throughout the session.  I asked if that didn't make me a poor candidate for hyperbaric pressure for my purpose,  improving my quality of life in old age. Some research has shown that hyperbaric pressure improves telomere length and cellular senescence. Cellular senescence, an irreversible cell-cycle arrest mechanism,  is when cells stop operating as they did in a younger body. Lutz calls them 'ghost cells.'  They're not dead, but neither are they quite there.  The increased oxygen absorption in the hyperbaric tank renews them in some way. For this to be effective, the pressure must be at a 2 ATA, not lower, and you must be in the tank for an hour. If I couldn't manage either of those two factors, there would be no point in me doing the procedure. 

   Bailey called and said he would have my new PC laptop ready by today.  When I didn't hear from him,  I texted him to ask, but I still had no response.  I finally called.  The first attempt to load the new computer had failed.  It was in the process now.  He said it was 99% done.  I could drive down there, and it would be ready in minutes. He said it would be ready in the morning.   

    Mama K called and said I could work with her fifth-grade Twins today.  She initially told me the girls were available Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I arranged my schedule accordingly.  I told Shauntel I would be at Ulu Wini on Thursdays and Fridays.  I was about to head out when I got Mama K's call.  I would arrange my schedule. 

   I called the fourth-grade LG's mother several times. I wanted to talk to her about this new approach I wanted to take with LG. She never answered. I spent the evening creating an exercise I hoped would address his problem. We'll see. I think it is a psychological problem—of sorts.

His need to 'understand' why he is doing something prevents him from following directions.  I suspect this prevented him from learning to read until I got to him.  Once I explained he could not count on a one-to-one correspondence between the letter and the sound, he rapidly learned to read.  All he had already been taught in school made sense, and he made rapid progress.  

   Mike and I had similar problems when we were children. Whatever problems we had in childhood persisted into adulthood to some extent.  I do much better just following the bouncing ball and doing an activity I don't fully understand – to my satisfaction. However, I still have lingering auditory processing problems.  Remembering a new Hawaiian word is still a challenge.  I have to work on it, and it may still slip.  Those with good auditory processing skills inhale new words in another language. My sister does that. She's off to visit her son in Holland next week. I bet she'll come home with a basic knowledge of Dutch.  She will have to wrestle down her lifelong knowledge of German.  It's harder to learn something slightly different from what we already know than to learn something totally foreign.

   Mike could only understand something if he already had a good basis. He couldn't just memorize miscellaneous facts.  He was really ashamed of the way he learned. Mind you, wound up with two Ph.D.s with straight A's from Columbia University and Catholic University with this' disability.'  It was only a serious hindrance when he took the standardized tests for college entrance, both the SAT and GRE.  He had to get a good grade on the SAT to get a scholarship to Columbia and then on the GRE to get a scholarship to Catholic University.  In both cases, his scores didn't qualify him. The story is he was the only one (of what group, I don't know) who didn't get the scholarship upon entering Columbia.  In the case of Columbia, he was awarded the scholarship the following year when they saw what a good student he was. The story is he was the only cohort member with a scholarship in the end. In the case of Catholic, it didn't work out as well.  They did not change their minds when they saw his work. They based the scholarship award strictly on the GRE.

   Poor Mike took the GRE twice, trying to get his grade up. The second time, I went to the test site with him and sat in the teacher's lounge with other middle aged people, waiting for the children to take them home. We lived two blocks from the school. When he came out of the test, he was crying. He said, "Promise me I never have to take that test again."  

   Mike allowed me to help him study briefly. His problem was obvious. He couldn't make sense of language if he didn't know the content.  These tests are a series of essays on random topics.  It's a language test, not a test of subject knowledge.  He was lost.  He defined himself as someone with a learning disability, actually believing I diagnosed it. No, I did not think of him as having a learning disability; I thought of him as having poor language skills. Those can be taught and learned. That's what I do for a living.

    Later in the day, I drove to town and picked up my new computer from Bailey. He offered to recycle the old one. I accepted his offer.