Unicorn with moonroof

from Brain Damaged News

painting/collage by Judith Hannah Weiss, notably not including moonroof or unicorn.

Testers keep testing.  They quantify my cognition, calculate my consciousness and assess my potential to contribute anything of value – ever – to anything. One tester sweeps hair we can’t see off her face, shakes it, then does it again. One keeps patting her cheekbones as if to make sure they’re still there. One keeps crinkling her nose.

The nose-crinkler shows me “action pictures” which show people doing things I am supposed to name.  Like “pulling,” “pushing,” catching,” “throwing.” I couldn’t say what anyone was doing or what any actions were.

At the beginning, I couldn’t remember the accident. Weeks later, I notice the all-caps Isuzu logo from the crushed car imprinted just beneath my collarbone. I either never noticed it before or never thought it strange to see a car brand (pun intended) just above my bra. By then, swelling in the skull had increased, which means I was better in the first weeks and months than I might ever be again.

My head has been hurting for five, ten, twelve, fifteen, eighteen years. In other words, since the truck. I acquired the same type of injury former representative Gabrielle Giffords suffered when she was shot in the head.  

My brain is selectively stimulated while sporting a snug cap of electrodes which shoots electric current into my prefrontal and temporal lobes. I’m seated at a monitor, to which I’m wired, seeing a series of images flashed on the screen for a second or less. A book, a pencil, a flower, a hat, followed by a few seconds of whiteness.

Then another image appears for a second, which is either an image I’ve already seen, or that object slightly changed -- like a book, closed before, is open now. I must hit the right button to indicate whether the object is as I remember it or has changed in some way. I get a green check when I’m right and a red X when I’m wrong.

I have trouble with my orbitofrontal cortex. It’s the part of the brain that looks for the “BBO – the bigger better offer.” It compares X to Y, and if Y seems better, goes with Y. But I can’t remember X or Y, which means I can’t compare. 

Google says I can get a new glow with finely milled rice bran, exfoliate with biodegradable jojoba beads, and acquire a functional unicorn. It comes with an available moon roof, unless I read that wrong.

Sometimes I see words that aren’t there. For example, I see “Commuter brain slides into creek,” which really says “commuter train” and I see, “Thank you for your pitiful donation,” which really says “pivotal.”

I also see “Reversing mitochondrial decay with supplements increases cellular levels of The Boston Globe”— which would likely surprise both The Globe and purveyors of said supplements.