by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday January 27, 2009
If there is one thing that stands out at my two hospitalizations over the past three months it’s how boring the nights were. Not the pain, not the food but the boring nights.
In the night of the 24th of November last year there was a particular treatures cold spell that froze over bridges end bicycle routs. But I didn’t know that when I set out for work on Tuesday the 25th.
Only Ten meters from my front door I slipped and fell and broke my left hip. Luckily I was discovered within minutes by a lady who called for an ambulance and I was rushed to hospital. An other lucky circumstance was that I hadn’t eaten that morning, so I could be operated on the same day.
That was where the luck ended.
From the moment I met the first nurse I started telling telling that I’m autistic. I’ve had enough experience in the last two years to know that autism has the tendency to complicate things. But sadly nobody at the hospital took any notice of it.
Two days after the operation I was given my first walker and was told that I should start learning to walk again. But I soon found that I couldn’t.
The first time I tried it I could manage to put a little bit of wait on my left leg but I kept tripping over the walker. The second time I couldn’t get my left leg to bear any weight. Which seemed strange because that didn’t seem that difficult the first time. The next day they came with crutches, which was even worse. I couldn’t get my left leg to bear weight and I couldn’t keep my balance.
After that the physiotherapist told me to practice with the walker on Saturday and Sunday. But I couldn’t. i just couldn’t walk with that thing.
Sunday night after a little panic attack I finally realized what was going wrong. This was a simple problem having to do with one of the symptoms of autism. Autistics can only learn one skill at the time.
Learning to walk and learning to use crutches are two different skills. There just too much information. My brain can’t process it all at one. Walking with crutches actually feels like walking with four legs and I have think about the place where I put every one of my four “feet”.
To learn to walk I need a rollator.
I got one on Monday. From then learning to walk became much easier and I could leave the hospital on Wednesday. Only four day after the hospital wanted to send me home.
One and a halve month later I was back in hospital. After a checkup the surgeon decided that something had gone wrong with my hip and had to be corrected. So last Friday morning 11 o’clock I was emited and by 1 o’clock operated upon.
Tomorow, Tuesday around 11 o’clock I will back home. Again 4 nights in hospital.
The problem is I don’t feel really sick. Yes my leg is operated upon and it hurts a bit. But for the most part that’s kept in check by the the pain medication.
For the way i feel I could actually leaf my bed and walk around except for the fact that I can’t walk.
So I spent the entire day in bed. Reading a little, watching television and talking to people. And then at 10 PM the staff comes by, turns the lights off and I’ supposed to fall a sleep. But of course I’m not at all sleepy.
So I spent the night waiting. Watching a little television but there is nothing on and reading. But reading isn’t much fun if you only do it to pass the time.
For this, my last night in hospital, I decided to write this article. It’s now 3.49 AM. I only have to wait four more hours before breakfast is served.
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by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday December 9, 2008
Two weeks ago I almost stopped drawing.
After trying to draw trees, landscapes, faces abstracts and using the teachings from two book it was more then clear that I don’t have any drawing talent what so ever.
It was also clear that I had to go through far more trouble then I planned when I started this blog. I just wanted a place were I could show the pictures in my mind in the same way as that other people show there holiday snapshots. They don’t have to take a course to learn to use there camera so why would I get so much trouble trying to do the same.
That was the point I reached two weeks ago when my involuntary holiday started.
Almost at ones I started noticing a few things. The talking in my head stopped without there being a clear reason why. I found that the more I thought in pictures the less the pain bothered me. (Which was a good thing because the pain medication didn’t work very good.) And I noticed that the moment I started thinking in pictures, I again felt the need to draw them.
At this moment I actually feel the need to spent far more time drawing then I’ve ever done.
It took me a while to figure out why.
A few weeks ago I came across an article about a book in which Malcolm Gladwell argues that there isn’t such a thing as talent.
From extensive testing scientists have found that there is a correlation between the number of hours that people have practiced a skill and there level of expertise. Or more specific that anyone can get to be an expert in any skill if he is willing to practice for 10,000 hours.
But that’s also the catch. 10,000 hours is a very large amount of time. To reach it you’d have to practice 7 hours a week for the next 10 years. Or 14 hours a week for the next 5 years.
For me it answers an other question that I’ve been asking myself for years: Why is it that experts always love what they do? Is that because they are very good in what they are doing?
No it isn’t. They are experts because they love what they do.
Start playing the piano when you’re ten. Practice two or three hours a week and by the time you’re 30 you will be very good. But nobody will think of you as talented because you’ve been doing it for 20 years.
But if you’re the kind of guy for whom drawing is the reason to get out of bed in the morning. The kind of guy who fails his tests because he was busy drawing and didn’t pay attention. It could very well be that by the time you drop out of school at your 15th or 16th you are considered a talented painter (or tattoo artist).
But why is it important for me to know this? Well I have two kinds of pictures in my mind.
A large part of the pictures in my mind are based on what I see of the part of the world in which I travel on a daily bases. Those pictures feel like snap shots and I need an easy way to show them.
Although it took a while I have found an easy way to show them by showing work by other artist. The world in which they live doesn’t differ that much from mine that I can’t use them to show my world. (Or actually if they do I don’t show them.)
Then there are the pictures of my own thoughts. Those pictures are far more complicated and I never expected to just show those pictures. It’s clear that showing my thought would be far more complicated.
The more complicated pictures take far more time to draw.
Until now I hardly ever drew them because I felt that they would come in the way of learning the easy tricks needed to show my snap shots. But now I know that isn’t true.
By taking more time to draw more complicated drawing I’m learning far more. Which means that I can draw ever more complicated thought.
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