Over the next couple of weeks, my mom began to notice that I was turning yellow, a sure sign of jaundice and liver distress. My parents took me to the family doctor. The doctor gave them some very strange advice for 1967—"Take him to a brain specialist. Then ignore everything he says and take him to a chiropractor!" In 1968 that would have cost him his license and his practice. But he was less than six months from retirement and he cared more about me than he did the license. Thank you, Mr. Doctor!
Mom and dad did as he said. They took me to a brain specialist where I was connected to an Electroencephalogram (EEG). I remember it broke down three time during the test and they had to come in and fix it. The doctor was able to determine that I had scar tissue in my brain from the injury. His prognosis was that I would be epileptic by the time I was 18. He prescribed some medication (large yellow gel-caps as I remember) which I began taking. It made me non-functional – after taking the meds I would sit staring into space for hours on end. Within a few days my mother flushed the remaining doses down the toilet and I can still remember seeing it going down.
We already knew we were moving at the end of the school year, just a few weeks away, so my parents opted to wait until we'd moved to Marfa, Texas to take me to the chiropractor. After his examination, the Chiropractor, whose name I can't remember, told us that the accident had pinched the nerve to my liver and that adjustments would help some, but that, as I grew taller, the nerve would straighten and correct the problem. I was to avoid processed sugars, processed flour, and other foods that were hard on the liver and stick to whole grains and whole sugars until I was 18 or fully grown. That's not bad advice for anyone. Within a few days of beginning the treatments and new diet, my color was back to normal as was my energy level. By the time I was 18, I was able to go off the diet without negative repercussion. I never developed epilepsy, but not everything was quite the same.
'till my head spins…
My mom had trouble keeping our names straight, especially when she was flustered. She would go through all six of our names before she could call out the right one of us, "Ann, Jim, Tom, Steve, Ruth, John…you know who you are! Get over here this instant!" I was having the same problem. Though we had changed schools before, adapting to the new school was worse than I imagined. I couldn't remember anyone's name! Meeting someone in the hall or trying to address a teacher became a terrifying experience. I began to avoid interaction with others. This was 5th grade and I remember it as being one of the worst years in what became a very dark time in my life. It didn't help that I was also very small for my age and always the smallest boy in my class. After 6th grade in Marfa we would move to Monahans, Texas where I would go through both Junior High School and Senior High School – 6 years in one town – and by the time I graduated from High School I still could not tell you the names of most of my classmates if you asked me.
My first years of college were more positive. I had a few friends who I was in almost every class with. I could either remember their names, or we were close enough I didn't have to call them by name. I think their names might have been Lee, George, and Steven, but… well… maybe not George… was it Charles? I'm not sure Lee is the right name either. And then there was what's-her-name who managed the supply room we worked in. She kind of adopted the three of us. I see her face. I remember her smile, her laugh, and her kindness. But her name is nowhere to be found.
But that was a LONG time ago, so maybe that excusable.
Over the 30+ years since then I would work in both the software industry and in churches as a worship pastor or choir director. Imagine working with the same choir for almost ten years and not being able to call most of the members by name. Imagine having customers that you talk with repeatedly on the phone, that you visit and work with on-site, but whose name you can't remember unless the call tracking system gives you contact information.
Fortunately for me, names don't typically jump genders. We have a son and two daughters. While I never confused my son's name with my daughters' names, I have a 50-50 chance of getting either daughter's name right at any given time. If there is a family gathering and my siblings are in the mix, my son and my brothers randomly switch names and any of the women folk may get called by any name on the list of female attendees. How embarrassing it is to call my wife by my sister's name or vice versa!
But it gets really personal when my wife and I are out and we come across someone I have met before but she hasn't. While I'm trying to remember the person's name to introduce them to my wife I sometimes forget my wife's name so that I can't introduce her to them! And we've been married 28 years! Do you have any idea how terrifying that is? Or that time I went to sign a check and couldn't remember my own name! Fortunately, this isn't a progressive problem. It's the same now that I'm 61 as it was when I was 16.
…and the labels fall off
Now that I'm 60+, I'm embarking on a new journey, starting a new work (kind of like a church), and the fear of not being able to remember people's names still terrifies me. Today I did some research and found that the name forgetting phenomenon has a name and a cause. That name is "anomic aphasia," which is typically caused by a stroke or a head injury. (I found that name at 9:00 this morning, by 10:00 I wasn't sure I had remembered it correctly, and by 11:00 it was gone, and I had to look it up again…so I bookmarked it in Google.) Anomic aphasia has differing characteristics and levels of severity in different individuals. In my version of anomic aphasia, the labels fall off. All kinds of labels. Names, most importantly, but scripture book, chapter, and verse labels fall off, which is a problem for a pastor. It's kind of like having a warehouse full of boxes which you have labeled, but the labels fall off into a pile on the floor and a breeze mixes them up and spreads them all over the place. Not only can you not find the label in the pile, but you're not sure which pile the label is in.
It affects everyday life. Direction labels fall off too. "Right" and "left" don't stick to their appropriate directions. I can read maps with expert skill. I've traveled all over America and visited and driven in several foreign countries. If I'm in unfamiliar territory, I have a map, the sun is up, and I know where I am and where I want to be, I can get there faster than your GPS can take you there. But if we're driving along and you tell me "turn right at the next corner," I panic momentarily while I try to figure out which way is right. Imagine, if you will, my frustration when I was taking dance classes! "To the right, two, three, four; now forward, two, back, two, left…" and I'm going "To the right…," stop, look down to concentrate, think, "is 'right' this way or that way, um, I'll try this," CRASH into the person who went to the right right. If I ever get to take private dance lessons again, I think I'll ask the instructor to call out "Keys" and "Chapstick." My keys are always in my pocket on what you call the "right" side and my Chapstick is always in the other. I think I'll be able to respond faster and maybe even keep up. But maybe not. "Keys" and "Chapstick" are labels too.
Sometimes the labels don't fall off immediately. If I work with someone regularly for days, months, or years, the label may stay close to the package and be easier to retrieve. But if we stop working together, within a few days the label begins to fall farther and farther away from the box. I worked with some people for 10 years and a few weeks after leaving the company I couldn't tell you their name without spending a great deal of effort looking for their label in the various piles on the floor.
I've been a substitute teacher at the local middle school for almost two years. On any given day I will work with 100-200 students in the 7 classes I'm to teach that day. I get a role sheet for each class with 10 – 30 names on it. I call out each student's name at the beginning of class and try to spot the young man or woman in the classroom. Then I put the list outside the door so that an aide can take it to the attendance office. I'm left looking at a mass of students who are looking up at me and who I've looked at before in other classes. And the labels fall off. They expect me to know their names because they know mine. But I don't. I can't. I never will. And it breaks my heart. It terrifies me. Because I care about them. I want to get to know them. But without a name…
In this new work I hope to start—we'll all wear name tags when we get together. Because, in my head, the labels fall off.
Jim Porterfield, September 10, 2018