OneAndOneIs2

It seemed an appropriate title, given that I have a scar on my forehead resulting from a potentially life-threatening event...

If I concentrate hard, do you think I can get it to heal into a lightning-shape? :)

So.. it's been a month or so. Probably time for an update.

Well, I have a scar on my head. My thumb is back to normal size but still pretty weak. I managed to go rock climbing for the first time this week, and was.. well.. laughably bad at it. But it was at least a possibility. And I'm able to jog. If not particularly well. I managed to do my long route for the first time a week ago. I felt incredibly fat and unfit at the start. But eventually I loosened up and by the fifth mile it was going pretty well. Hopefully be able to build on that a bit more over this weekend.

I got a letter yesterday from my lawyer letting me know that the insurance company has admitted liability for the accident. So I'll get a refund for my broken glasses, bloodied clothes, etc. And with any luck some compensation for all the injuries.. I have to go see a medical expert sometime soon, at any rate.

I do happen to have my own injury insurance, but they're being incredibly poor communicators so I've yet to get an answer from them. Which is annoying.

Anyway.. it basically boils down to still being a bit battered & bruised, but mostly functional again. Physically, that is.

Mentally.. still got a little way to go. I'm still feeling monumentally paranoid about driving around corners when the road is wet. Which is unhelpful, what with working up an eight mile stretch of country road. In England. In winter.

Still, that too is better than it was. I was arriving at work with an aching jaw from the tension, and that's not happening any more.

The first drive back from work was interesting, though. In the same way that women can multitask and we can't, male vision works differently from female vision. Whilst a woman can take in pretty much the entire view at once, men have basically tunnel vision: All our attention is focused on the center. This can be to a greater or lesser extent: sitting relaxing in the garden, our attention is much less focused. Playing a competitive ballgame, on the other hand, and we barely see anything but the ball.

And coming home in the dark for the first time, I was rather tense. So it was objectively interesting, whilst being emotionally nerve-wracking, to notice that my vision was responding to my mood by making it almost impossible to see.

I could *not* get out of the hyper-focused tunnel-vision state. So I could see the car in front of me, but not have any idea of what was happening in my mirrors, the road ahead, the cars beside... Or I could look at the road, and then have no idea where the car in front was. Or check the mirror, and have no clue what was going on anywhere but behind me. And as for looking at the speedo.. no, that was just out of the question.

It was the most difficult drive I've ever done: Even though it was a fairly straight dual-carriageway, the darkness & the headlights & the inability to focus on more than one thing at a time made it incredibly hard just to drive slowly in a straight line. It was absolutely crazy.

That only took a couple days to fade, though, which was a big relief. The drive home isn't so bad any more, it's just dark. It's the drive in that bothers me: It's daylight, but it's early morning when you're most likely to get ice on the roads. I know this, because it's how I broke my shoulder :)

So it's taking me longer to drive to work, but other than that things are ok. The car has been fixed following the misadventure in the hospital car park. I'm still not at my best, but I'm mobile and doing things again. Bio-Oil is doing a relatively good job of soothing the scarring on my forehead. And my credit card, which I usually pay off every month, will hopefully be cleared relatively soon when the insurance people finally sort everything out.

And hey, it's only three weeks until Christmas :)