Brain Hemorrhage Day 20-44

Last post! And the last song will be Mr Vain by Culture Beat:

When I was a kid, I once went to a “children’s disco”, dressed in my wellies. I won the dance contest. And on the next disco too. And then the one after that. But not on the last two discos, so I stopped going. That’s very egocentric, I know. Anyway, I loved this song! It was like magic.

Day 20-44, May 22 – June 15

May 22

Harald is speaking tremendously. Everything is not correct. But parts of it!

Who wrote that? Who are you? 🙂 I went from one word a day, to complete sentences the next, to speaking a lot the third day … and all of it bullshit. I understood there were people there, I think I appreciated the conversation, but what I said didn’t make any sense. I don’t remember anything from these conversations at all, except for the very end, where I spoke mostly correctly, and didn’t understand myself when I used the wrong word. I hope it’s correct these days, but as I don’t know myself when I’m wrong, I can’t promise anything 😉

My brother wrote down some things I said during one of these conversations:

May 22 Trading, 1500, 5 rights

Sitting on the beach, drink a beer, and manage the economy.

Big Ban, help in ISLAND with China

“Meeg” the future hope

People will start making spooky

In the train cold

Yes … it’s quite hard to interpret! Although it sounds a little bit like a gaming, trading traveller interested in China. So not too far from the truth!

May 22

Niiice to see you again! And to be able to speak about this and that. You look like you are recovering amazingly! Thomas

Hi Harald, it’s good that you are back! /Johan

May 23, 2018

It’s the second time I’m visiting Harald, and tomorrow he is going to rehabilitation in Danderyd! It’s incredible how fast the change has been. Wonderful! So very happy! Good work, Harald. Everyone says hi, the basic income gang, the Green Party etc

Hugs from Anna, Green Party in Sundbyberg

(The party group leader Emelie T wants to come and see you as well.)

Read Anna’s book!

May 26, a sunny Saturday

Martin Jordö here. I’m smiling, since our conversation is flowing almost as normal – it’s just that you sometimes change a word here and there, which makes it very exciting to decode 🙂

You are giving me ice water from the water dispenser and are restlessly walking around. We’re talking about all kinds of things and you are very eager about going back to Oslo.

Warm Gothenburg hugs, see you for an ice cream walk next time!

/Martin (the Basic Income gang says hi)

The last notes in the diary is my own way of trying to find the passport for my own computer. And suddenly I just remembered it. It was something completely different.

On May 24, after three weeks, I went to rehabilitation in Danderyd’s hospital. The first night I was a bit paranoid and wanted to flee from the building. I was sitting in the living room all night, waiting for both night nurses to be gone. But one of them kept sitting watching me the whole night. I’m so sorry for that! Were should I have gone, from Danderyd’s hospital? I had no wallet, no keys, and no clothes but a white hospital dress. I’d look crazy! And maybe I was crazy 😉 But the next day, paranoia was gone.

I was there for two and half weeks and got better and better. It got more and more boring to be in the hospital since the rest of the brain patients were a little bit … slower. I taught a man how to read in there. He said he lost it, that all letters only looked like weird symbols. So we did it “A, B, C …” and after one hour he was like “I can read!”. So it was all in his brain, just not the wires connecting to the right places.

Here’s a picture I took myself, about one month after the accident. See the scars! They’re still all 3D. If I’m ever talking about my brain hemorrhage, I lift off my cap and go “HERE …”

In the end, I had to play Go Fish for two hours per day, for the last two weeks. It’s a pain to play with anyone, but playing it with two persons out of whom one couldn’t even speak … was the worst torture ever. In fact, I don’t think we did much good in there. It felt mostly like a private hospital milking money from the state. (While I paid 10 euros a night. So 200 euros was my final bill for all these 44 days.)

So on a Friday, one week early, I packed all my stuff in blue plastic bags, took the subway home and wrote the doctors “I’m on the subway home. See you later in life!”

Five months after the accident, I took “Högskoleprovet” (the Swedish SAT test) and got 2.0 (max) at the math part, and 1.8 on the language part. So reading was a little bit slow, but I was still quite intelligent. The other week I took an IQ test for a job application and got a better result than 93 to 98% percent of the test takers. So no Mensa, but almost. Like normal.

I was very tired in the beginning though. I went straight back to work, three months after the accident, and during that year I studied a lot but also slept a lot, or just passed out in front of the TV. In the end, I got this feeling that they all wanted to fire me. Maybe I should have dealt with it differently, as in waiting 1-2 years (while studying mathematics/programming), but what happened now was just that I never wanted to be in that school, at all. It depressed me.

Plus that I actually don’t understand Norwegian, no matter how many books I read or TV series I watch. They all have their own weird dialects. Some of them even change consonants, so that all v:s are k:s! Such kikings. I understand people from east of Oslo, but not the rest of them. The Scandinavian countries are a “dialect continuum”, so if you’re from the west of Sweden, you understand it better, than if you’re from a suburb east of Stockholm. To Norwegians though, Swedish is just another dialect, so they understand me, but I don’t understand them.

I was like the left guy here:

Funny story: I started speaking English to a guy from Northern Norway, and with a girl from Southern Norway, and we had a nice conversation the three of us. During which she said to him: “Actually, I’ve never understood a word of what you have been saying before.” and he was like “What?! Not a word?”. English saved them 🙂

I took a Russian course once, and the teacher said that while Sweden is a lot smaller than Russia, we have way more different dialects than Russians. And Norway and even Denmark is worse. So I think we should all switch to International English, and keep our dialects for family and friends. And learn strict Stockholmish, Osloish and Copenhagenish if speaking to Swedes, Norwegians and Danes (which is extremely good for the immigrants).

So, anyway, I got myself a boat ticket to Brazil, which is the beginning of this blog. I had to end that trip because of Corona, but after the best 6.5 months of my life!

I’m studying programming now. Because my brain explodes with ideas every morning, and they need to be coded.

This is a very rare photo, since it includes both my sister and my brother together! It was 11 months after the accident. My brother went to Japan that day. And I’ll end up there too, post-Corona. To eat all their ramen! With reviews here 😉

Here’s an old Japan photo:

Me, Thomas and Johan, partying it in Roppongi in 1999.

And here in Solna 2019, 16 months after the accident 🙂

Anyway, this was my experience from the Swedish health care system. Thank you very much for saving my life and my brain. In these Corona times, I’m so sorry that all of you are working so hard when saving us. I’ll think about you, all the health care workers, when voting for Stockholm County, no matter how I vote on city or national level. And I’ll look at the parties’ history in Stockholm County and ignore their Coronaish promises.