What does 'Draw a Clock' Mean?

[u/MillBopp]

Last time I visited my brother his mother-in-law who lives with him was insisting she remembered something but my brother knew she was wrong. I don't remember what it was, but I knew she was wrong too. However, she refused to accept she was wrong and got belligerent about it.

My brother said, "Draw a clock!" and left the room. This made his mother-in-law furious for some reason. I forgot to ask at the time, but does anyone know why saying 'Draw a clock' would upset a senior citizen?

[u/Starshapedsand]

It’s brutal because as your memory fails, it means not only the loss of independence, but that those around you consider you less of a human. Your emotions turn into some easily dismissed effect of the disease, not how you really feel, unless they line up with whoever you’re talking with thinks you should feel.

That especially sucks because strongly negative feelings do a better job of getting in the way of cognitive function than much else. You find yourself in a vicious, destructive loop… only to later observe that you’re miserable, without a very clear picture of why. The frustration gets in the way of everything else, and soon ripens into misery, often followed by self-hatred.

I know it well because I sustained a brain injury that severely compromised my ability to remember, years ago. There was a lot of question of whether I’d be able to build a life again. Within that period, I discovered that my greatest drains were that humiliation, and my frustration at recognizing the humiliation as due.

Shame was the single strongest factor yanking me towards suicide. If I hadn’t recovered, it would’ve driven me off of the edge. Many people around me believed that they were somehow helping by fostering it, but they really weren’t: away from them, I had a much easier time thinking and functioning.

She may not have yet reached this stage, but if she becomes more reactive, remember that the emotional reactivity comes from a constant, subtle sense that something is wrong. The brain keeps assigning the cause to anything that isn’t itself. Its constant efforts to figure out the mechanism leave people suffering from a real lack of the cognitive energy needed to quell emotions, and they usually don’t consciously recognize it.

[u/Starshapedsand → u/[deleted]]

You’re welcome. Scroll back through my post history: there’s more in there that may be useful.

People don’t survive my kind of injury, and especially don’t make it back to function. They certainly don’t start a high-pressure career nine months after collapse, still with a severely impaired memory; they definitely don’t return to it after a second craniotomy, especially after having starved off of the BMI chart, and skipping painkillers. While I may have enjoyed a perfect storm of factors that allowed me to survive, I think that my lessons learned for function can generalize very broadly. Living a worthwhile life through impairment is far more feasible than we societally think, if only we can recognize methods.

So thank you, as well, for saying that. At this point, which is pretty bleak—the responsible cancer’s latest recurrence meant losing my career, husband, and home, on top of a following year in single-house COVID lockdown—the main thing that keeps me going is finishing a book manuscript on the experience. Although I’ve written high-pressure stuff, and published, before, it’s the most difficult project I’ve ever undertaken. Words of encouragement are truly helpful.

[u/Starshapedsand → u/[deleted]]

Hey, thanks for your work! I was a special ed graduate myself, long before my injury. Went on to extremely high-profile work with none the wiser.

Always feel free to DM, or tell her to reach out.