I go back and forth from what I should think about (positive, healthy thoughts) and what I shouldn’t think about. You know what you should do… but knowing is NOT half the battle, it is THE battle. Depression. I hate what I did to myself. Therefore I hate myself. I have no one else to blame. I can’t escape this self loathing.
I have high performance expectations but I’ve been unable to meet them. There is so much confusion in my life. Am I comparing my level of achievement to my LBBI (life before brain injury) peers? Am I trying to attain what is unattainable with this altered brain? I am a constant disappointment to myself. I hate this brain injury.
I had a brief interaction with someone without a brain injury who would see my struggles with self hate as issues related to her own self deprecation. There are striking similarities as far being unhappy with self and not being able to accept and love who you are or where you are in your life but I can’t help but think that this brain injury might keep me in this dark hole of anger and hatred of what I can’t change a little bit longer.
Relationships are STILL suffering. It seems easy to blame a brain injury for miscommunications and you would think that four years later I would know how my reaction or lack of reaction, lack of communication or too much communication, too aggressive or too passive, how not being able to remember and needing to ask or to repeat…I should be able to understand how it affects others.
I don’t want to use the brain injury as an excuse but there really is a part of my brain that was damaged that makes it extremely difficult to read the emotions of others. I come off as aloof, not caring about anything or anyone other than myself. Is that who I’ve become? Am I now this person? Some may say that I was a lot of those things before but those who really know/knew me know that I love and I love deeply. I hope that my family and closer friends (who are family) recognize that I’m still here. I hate that it takes me going public (posting on the blog) to let you know how much you mean to me. I do care and I appreciate your loyalty and patience with me.
I HATE not being able to effectively communicate my thoughts. It has taken months to be able to post on the blog again and it’s not because I didn’t want to. It is because I am unable to keep my thoughts straight and if I tried to post by myself without a “proxy”; someone to help me form my thoughts, keep me on track, reduce the decorations I add when I type what was a simple thought which causes “what did he say?”. It would be like trying to read Martian. Makes sense to me but probably, only to me !?!? (that’s an exclaiming question) but it really wasn’t a question was it !!?!? See what I mean!!?!?!
Here’s a visual…we’re drinking a beer, hanging out on the dock and I fall deep in to the water. Big splash, everyone runs over to see what has happened. I come up for a breath and it seems like maybe I’m going to be ok but the tide comes in and the waves start to crash against the dock. Someone says “Mike can swim, he’s strong and determined, he’ll make it. Keep up the good work Mike!” and the party continues.
I can swim but not like I could before I fell so deep in to the dark water. I keep swimming and swimming and swimming but, boy am I tired. Looking in to the water, it distorts your vision and although I look like the Mike that fell in to the water, I am no longer swimming like Mike or like anyone else. “What’s wrong with him? Why is he swimming like that? That’s not the way you’re supposed to swim Mike! Try harder!” I see you, I hear you but the waves take me under again and again. I am screaming “It is dark but I am here! I am sorry! I am trying to stay strong! Don’t forget about me!”
The theory of relativity, that we’ve All come to know and Love(?), is actually two separate principle-theories and what they happen to be are the theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity, principle-theories just means that these were NOT based on Hypothesis but Actual empirical data so bonus, right?!?
Directly relating, I’d think to actual Time movement and it’s passing; through deduction one could infer that the actual relativity WOULD also refer to clock-time?
Have you ever tried to dry a pair of tennis shoes in the clothes dryer? If there is nothing else in the dryer, they loudly “thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. Conceivably, the shoes go in, they dry, you take them out but alone it takes forever. They thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. You put them in the dryer, you take them out, they still feel wet, you put them back in. You hear them thump, thump, thump,thump. You take them out, they ‘re still wet. Put them back in…thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. You check again and the frustration builds. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…one more thump and you’re feeling like you’re going to explode. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…welcome to my world.
Thoughts. Can’t stop them. Louder – thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thumb, thump, thump. I can’t stop the noise in my head.
Another analogy. Driving 100 miles an hour, I hit a brick wall. I put it in reverse, get back in the car, drive 100 miles an hour and hit that brick wall again. I back it up, gun it, hit the brick wall again…why? Dude, you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result? Is your brain damaged? Yes. Apparently it is.
I have a pad of paper near my bed and i write notes when a thought comes to mind. Here’s one for you:
[ It's not that Einstein was wrong because how can a "God" be wrong?" he says with a smile. Einstein was speaking in reference to sight "nothing moves faster than light" however, I counter and say that time moves outside of light and that time stays perfectly relative to your individual circumstance. Time is your personal vehicle and it is dependent on your moment. Like an accident, time moves s l o w l y because it is your individual circumstance. BUT from the outside, it happens in the blink of an eye and that's why time varies dependent on the (as we say in the brain injury world) the experiencing person.]
If I am perseverating, a day may last a week and I perseverate often. Thump, thump, thump, thump…that same thought hitting the walls of my brain over and over again but it quiets long enough for me to think ” what am i doing? God stop this insanity, please!!! Then thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…here I go again. Banging the phone or email with the “cold call recruiter” alter ego that for another might be Harvey McLean (some will understand) that says “keep going boy, they can only say “no” for so long” thump, thump, thump. Thoughts. I can’t sleep without thump, thump, thump, thump. This day “thump, thump, thump, thump” has lasted a week for me but for you, it was a normal day. Time is relative to the experiencing person.
I think what had and is transpiring is coming to grips with what has happened. “why can’t you get this?”, “why can’t you move on?”, “push harder!” ” how can anything take this long?” i usually don’t hear this from others, this is my own dialogue. From a lack of understanding of how to deal, cope, or support a person with an injured brain; some awkwardly distance themselves, some placate to keep the peace, a few condescend or reprimand but i ask that you please just keep it real. We are social beings and I make attempts at being social… still. I know I can be harsh, it may not always make sense when I text or email you but I, Mike Rosner am still in here somewhere. I don’t want to be the “new” me, I want/ need to find out who I can be, merging the two. If I have offended you, it was not my true intention. Sometimes I only can only hear the “thump, thump, thump” banging the walls of my brain.
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability- to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip -to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
” Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around… and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills… and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things …about Holland.
APRIL 27, 2011
Mike’s first speaking engagement with Brain Injury Services’, Speaker’s Bureau was a success. Well, if you don’t count the fact that I did not check the camcorder to see if the CD had enough room to hold the entire speech. ARG! I got everything but the last 30 seconds, so when you get to the end of the video; this VERY IMPORTANT paragraph, is what you will miss:
“My name is Mike Rosner. I am a 28 year old survivor of traumatic brain injury. I can’t imagine my life without the support of Brain Injury Services and the Speaker’s Bureau. They are a United Way Agency. I urge you to support these organizations and consider the impact a single choice can have. Thank you.”
If I am successful, the video that will be linked to this post; although a poor cell phone quality video, was taken at a time when my son could not speak. The video was taken November 19, 2007 when for the first time after the accident, Michael was off the ventilator. A therapist had just left the room after completing one assessment to determine if Mike would be transferring to a nursing home or to Mt Vernon Hospital’s Brain Injury Rehab Unit. The test was necessary because after a month of endotracheal intubation and ventilator support, there was a 50% chance that after extubation, he would have swallowing difficulties. He really didn’t meet much of the criteria to get in to Mt Vernon, but if he had swallowing difficulties, he would not have been accepted.
By chance, I happened to be there when they performed the assessment and in amazement I watched as Mike purposefully followed 1 out of 3 commands (not quite what they were looking for but it worked) and was able to swallow ice chips, applesauce and orange juice with ease. I remember watching it all play out and feeling so giddy with excitement! When the director said “let’s send him to Mt Vernon”, I wanted to throw open the windows to tell the world that God hears us and through our prayers, thoughts and believing in miracles, Michael was receiving!”. I didn’t throw open any windows, but if you’ve been following this journey, you know I blogged about it.
You will see and hear on this video that although there was a lot of background noise, Michael made no sounds. He could not speak. The broken pathways in his brain were not yet able to help him remember speech but we believed that those connections would find their way and one day, through continued prayer for healing, we would hear his voice again.
Michael’s brain was injured on October 21, 2007 after he made the decision to get behind the wheel and drive after drinking but tomorrow; three years, six months, six days or 1285 days or 30,816 hours or 1,848,960 minutes after the decision that changed the course of his life forever, Michael’s voice will be heard.
On April 27, 2011 at George Washington University, as a member of Brain Injury Services Speaker’s Bureau; for the first time in public, Michael will use his voice to spread awareness. How will he tell this story in a ten minute capsule?
I don’t really know where to begin. It’s been such a long time and the road in between has been a bumpy one. The last time I posted was before the 3 year celebration and I will share with you why it’s been difficult to post. It appears that the difficulty has been my ability to keep my thoughts together and even want to reach out to update. Depressed much?
At the time of the third celebration, I guess I wasn’t in much of a positive mood. Is it like mood swings? I guess but it’s depression in it’s truest form. What am I depressed about? Let’s see…nothing in particular, its collective. It is so heavy. Coming to terms with having a brain injury – to go about my every day life and still have this really bad brain injury feels like “hell on earth” every day. But no, it doesn’t. Sometimes I have really good days. I think of myself as an awesome person and with that its’ really difficult when the behaviors that brain injury brings to my daily life daily exhibit themselves to be something I cannot identify with, it is so frustrating. Frustrating is not powerful enough. I can’t identify with this person that can’t remember what you told him, or what he said, or that person that can be socially inappropriate or in an instant spin emotionally out of control at the people closest to him. I can’t identify? I can’t even understand it. Maybe you can understand it because you’re on the outside looking in and “oh, that Mike’s brain injury”. well, I don’t get that opportunity. It is freaking happening to me . Right?
But the thing is, so what? life goes on with or without you. Your life is going on and so is mine. My friends go beyond trying to understand and trying to support. Gratitude, praise…beyond what I can even articulate. I’m not handling this fine. I’m screwing up relationships but people forgive and maybe/probably I’m too hard on myself but when I look back on some of these recent experiences, I would think “ I can’t stand him!” I would not have the patience to tolerate me. And some don’t. No hard feelings about the people who don’t have the patience or the time to deal with the brain injury me and I don’t expect them to. I tune out, as well. I’m not happy facing this thing that changed my life. I don’t think I have a pessimistic view but I feel like I need to be a realist and the fact that I am almost 30 and feel cursed with this blessing. Blessing of life, cursed with ambition. Blessing – I am ambitious. I am constantly searching for the latest and greatest. I love technology and I want to work in the field that gets my adrenaline going. Cursed – I am ambitious about what interests me, not about recovery and rehabilitation. Who wants to wake up every day to find that this day just like yesterday is rehab! No one or at least I wouldn’t. I don’t.
I want to wake up and go to the office and mingle with co-workers and talk about the latest gadget (Motorola XOOM), the newest technology on the horizon (Honeycomb). I don’t want rehab for the rest of my life. But then the truth sets in and I STILL have a SEVERE brain injury. There are portions of my brain that still have to heal. The primal areas have been healing over the last three years and the executive function areas (the frontal lobes), still need a lot of therapy. It takes a life time to develop the frontal lobes and I started my life over three years ago. Becoming a young man again at the same time as rehabbing the most vital organ in our bodies; having the life experience of a nearly 30 year old has led me to deep philosophical thinking. I AM Mike Rosner. I AM a 28 year old brain injury survivor. I AM socially awkward.
I AM also thinking about spirituality. I AM. I think for sure that I have been in the midst of an epic fire walk through this rehab, sounds much worse than it actually is, but my philosophical self is attempting to figure things out. My latest figure is…
Not claiming to be an expert but in the bible Jesus speaks about “I AM”. I think that delving in to that further brings about this thought; we are all, each individually I AM. There is power behind those two words. God gave Jesus the “I AM” that made things happen and if Jesus was a man that walked this earth, maybe we all have the I AM to change the course of our thinking. I say my life is Hell now but it isn’t really Hell. Even if it was though, with the power I AM gives us, shouldn’t I be capable of changing that thought?
If I believe that I AM, if I live my life present, powerful and with intention, I AM in control. ”We” AM in control of how we interpret life. The mind is capable of so much and I’m not saying you can fly or shoot lasers out of your arms but it’s about focus and intention. Steering the course, being in control of the course of your life.
Just because I may have figured one thing out doesn’t mean anything is easier because I am still trapped in this fire-walk. Perseverative thoughts, perseveration, perseveration, perseveration is my HELL…I am on fire and I want to see where I’m going. After about 15 minutes of getting my thoughts back together I want to say that this is not egocentric. There are parts of the Bible that say “through me” so everything isn’t the “I AM” there’s an underlying something that I will keep working on, but basically what I want to say is this;
I think we are supposed to understand that there is greatness within us and that we are capable of great things. I AM capable of great things, YOU are capable of great things and I don’t mean what kind of car you drive, what label you wear or how much money you make but maybe I do, if that’s your definition of being capable. What I mean is there is a crack in all of us and all it takes is a little light to seep through to help us understand. It’s I AM, YOU AM, WE AM and on the days that I can grab on to this self revelation, it makes me feel LESS powerLESS about the course of my life.
I AM Mike Rosner.
** thanks to Mom for listening, typing and keeping me in between the ditches.
? right, is that a real activity? Either way I feel like I am surfing my way back to earth from my lowly home away from home on Jupiter/Pluto, possibly like I myself am a sort of mystical surfing comic book hero (obviously would in case not be requiring Oxygen).
As I continue to make choices and decisions on my own, external of real therapy and therefore escalating myself through the TOP of this puny Ranchos Los Amigos Scale of Cognitive Function which, bytheway has been revised now multiple times, I do believe since the ’70′s!! This was the scale used to help define a person’s recovery from coma over the long term. Example Level 1 – Deep coma where Level 10 is Essentially Normal. A person can be stuck at any level on this scale but when the patient reaches level 8 they are practically “in control” of their own life. Where they feel I am on the “attic ladder from Levels 7 to 8″, they being my star team of therapists, Ms. Debi Gale and Dr. Mercedes Alfaro
I guess the real thing for me now is to assist others with continuing to help raise awareness about brain injury and I do feel a bit partial towards the effect of the severe brain injuries. Most notably I can think of the guy from the Olympics…Kevin Pearce?
I know zero details of Kevin’s accident and recovery thereafter, as of now.
I hope to start an organization that may help escalate awareness of brain injury and most notably Severe Brain Injury.
I can only hope to have been responsible for you and your delayed decision making process in which you may be wrestling with the idea of whether or not to drive drunk event though I just want to be certain that I make NO claim to be without SIN?
I am full of wrongs, I always, usually say the wrong things, speak before thinking, could I steal that comment back? just prior to hitting your sound channeling organs. (also, why I continue speaking like I’m from another century?)
Though, I can say that I am chock full of humor!and whether you, you being Amanda Kibben , think that I’m funny or NOT.
The (my) humor is a present. Think of it as my little present to you, for you to remember me by because I may be “gone to November” but it’s already October. See what I’m saying?
Circles I run in my speaking, I am hopeful though that perhaps (Nate, perjaps?) my system will be exhausted of all this nonsense by the time I begin my speaking circuit. (time TBD)
I was always the one with no fear, I still feel like that. No one can sustain attention for three years, I have close friends that have gone far and above what was ever expected of what anyone would have expected. The longer you stretch things out the less and less people are still in line. ”On a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” Tyler Durden Fight Club
So review the difference between the first couple of paragraphs and this one. The first paragraphs were thoughts that were typed by me. The paragraph beginning with “I was always” are my thoughts typed by someone else. I say to myself “Gosh, I’m such a fool!” I’m an idiot!” because I get so weird but I don’t know, I have a brain injury. I can’t explain why I speak like I’m from another planet sometimes, I want to think the it’s 100% humor but then it doesn’t make sense and only funny to me. One function at a time please. Talk to me in person, I am told I am less robotic. Talk to me on the phone, or no, how about when I leave you a voice mail? well, there’s two or three functions required and now I am talking carrrazzzy. It’s ridiculous for me to expect that my friends would be in the thick of it still. I don’t blame them, they have work to do.
Back on track – year three. I am not celebrating life. I am in a funk. I feel like it’s all depression. I screw up every relationship. I don’t even know how I do because I can’t remember. It’s like drudging through a swamp fire every day, it’s almost gross. The one constant in my life is therapy and it feels like the healing process would be closer to complete BUT that’s the thing about brain injury. It’s going to be three years and you would think that it would be on the closer side to complete but it’s not. It’s still a lifetime of recovery. I have the life experience of a 28 year old but the functioning brain of a what???
For me, at this moment the single most devastating injury I sustained is the one that controls initiation because the thing that controls what we use to connect to other people is not functioning like it used to. I would be hanging out with Karl, Molly, Justin, Matt, Shannon, Adam, Dan and Jim but I’m not, I’m drudging through this swamp fire and I can’t even pick up the phone to say ”hey, what’s up?”
When I do get a chance to hang out then it’s over stimulation city and it seems to be just a vicious cycle. Like take no prisoners vicious. The thing about brain injury is that the brain processes information slower and too much, too fast = over stimulation = can’t think. Retreating to my phone (games, Internet) controlling the speed of information is a strategy but not a healthy strategy. I am aware and I have attempted to make a conscious effort to stop retreating. Attempting.
Hot air…you get up every day knowing what you’re supposed to do right? Monday morning you wake up, you know you need to take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed and either head to work or start making phone calls. Without thinking, you still know it’s Monday and you’ve got this and this and this to do and it needs to get done in this order. I wake up and have no idea what day it is even after I checked my watch 3 or 4 times, have no idea what I’m supposed to do with my day even after I look at my planner that is well laid out with appointments. I look, walk away and then get my phone or walk to my computer and what I am doing at the moment is the only thing I need to do. “Mike, you have speech today.” goes in one ear and out the other until “Mike, you need to get in the shower”, ”Mike, you need to get dressed”,”Mike, we need to leave in 5 minutes” “MIKE! Get off the computer!!” When you look at the time line of how often things are moving forward for me and how often things are moving backward, is it so difficult to figure out that maybe my life is a little different than yours? You have no idea. How do you think it feels to need help initiating what you should be able to initiate, plan and carry out on your own? I’ll tell you, it feels like drudging through swam fire!
My speech therapist asked “do you remember what being happy feels like?” My answer is NO. I love life but I hate life. I despise life. I was cursed with this blessing and the gift of a second chance at life. Do you know how much easier it would be to just be asleep forever? I used to wake up and not know what day it was because I had an awesome time, now I wake up and don’t know what day it is because I just don’t know.
I know that life is beautiful but to think that the most mundane things task my brain to exhaustion, is ridiculous. Again, ”On a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” and that includes me which is even more wild.
Next week – October 21, 2010 - I was not prepared for how I would be feeling at year three but I do understand that the greater the awareness, the greater the recovery. I guess it goes without saying that I am much more aware of my injuries than I was last year but I didn’t imagine the swamp so vast, the fire so hot and that this would be or feel never ending.
Is hope still alive? The human body will heal itself and time will keep moving forward. But am I in it to win it? Do I have the energy to work through this depression? Yes, of course I do. I just don’t know how it’s going to happen.
OBTW – the Space Cowboy metaphor…I’m on Pluto. Either way, I can’t breathe.
The body heals pretty fast but no matter how much healing that has gone into making me the Mike I am now, I STILL have a SEVERE TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY and healing is still a VERY SLOW process. Through this blog I am able to express my frustrations, and inform and educate about the devastating after effects of an injury to the brain. My life changing experience that is chronicled on these pages may serve as a window to one of the effects of one bad decision to drive after drinking.
I can’t say that if I had an opportunity to get my old life back, that I would want to take it all back. I don’t know. The gain that has come out of this has been so magnificent and miraculous that it would be difficult to measure the pros and cons of never having had this experience. Yet, the day to day drudgery of this verses that makes it difficult to quantify because one could never imagine, we don’t really think about the possibility of such an event. Every person’s life is different, every brain injury is different and did I EVER think that my life would be turned upside down when I was having the time of my life? No, no one does but one of my hopes now is that when you are at “I think I’m ok to drive”, think of me and DON’T. It is my hope that when you interact with someone who has suffered an injury to their brain, that you open your mind to understand the difficulty of trying to get through life with a horrible head cold that doesn’t go away. Think about having the flu and being really sick and how you’re tired, sluggish and it’s difficult to do just about anything… everything seems to take longer to process because you just can’t think clearly. Well, that’s a fraction of what it is like to walk around with only parts of your brain working.
I am faced with the reality of everything being changed and different and it seems obvious to me and like I shouldn’t have to explain but obviously I do. So, I talk a big game and come on, you have to know it’s a coping mechanism. I have to feel that I can do anything I put my mind to and I can. The problem is, my mind is working on a part time basis and to do anything I put my mind to, it has to be up to full time speed. The reality is too difficult to face all the time and honestly, I don’t want to face that I can’t do what I could do. But I still CAN do anything if given the opportunity…I don’t know…how do you put limits on yourself? I guess I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t think I want to learn how to that…yet.
I can’t think this way on a daily basis but there are days when I can see and understand more clearly. So, today looks clear: I imagine it like our solar system like planets orbiting the sun, the closer ones orbit faster, the ones further away take much longer to orbit and that’s where I am. My closest friends doing it BIG now it’s like they are on Mercury – fast days speeding forward…everyone else seems to me, to be on Earth having regular days but I am like Jupiter…not even Earth, I’m further back than earth. The people on Earth are going about their day, and their days are probably awesome. I realize there are people on Earth that have it a lot worse than me in some ways but they might still be progressing in life at a normal pace, maybe some aren’t. I was used to moving at sonic speed (back on Mercury in this case) and my people are still moving at that pace. Here I am on Jupiter and Jupiter revolves around the sun (life) much slooooower than Mercury and because Mercury is closer to the sun, and I am looking out at it, I can see that Mercury is moving on and moving faster and there’s nothing I can do being stuck on Jupiter except acknowledge that they NEED to move on and it’s GOOD that they’re moving on because they can continue to grow our dream. I can see that even the people on Earth are moving on and moving forward. So how did I get here and why does it feel like Jupiter?
I feel like I got banished to Jupiter because of the reckless life I was living and it’s not as much fun here on this crusty old planet. I still want to be on Mercury and move at Mercury’s pace but I am forced by the laws of nature to abide by the limits of an injured brain. And that is my life now. I don’t like it but I have to make the best of it. The ugly truth is, I will never be a Mecurian again but hopefully I will become an Earthling again. From some perspectives it may seem that Jupiter isn’t moving at all or isn’t moving near as fast but in actuality it is moving just as fast and covering more ground and making gigantic strides. The ground Jupiter covers is larger (the brain injury) so it’s making much larger gains. But when your brain moves at the speed of Jupiter; Mercury and Earth seem to only move further away…the progress on Jupiter is barely noticeable in comparison. It’s dark and cold here on Jupiter but there is life. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for my life and continued progress but I fight to breathe with the much thicker air on Jupiter, after all, I am a Mercurian.
Still pushing the limits from here on Jupiter and keeping hope alive.
