7/7/09 SHE'S PAYING THE PRICE

A chapter of my life has finally been closed. This morning I was in court. As per our plea bargain, she-who-ran-a-car-into-me pled guilty to all charges and ...

she is now in jail.

(Only for two days, does that sound right to you?)

While ordering my celebratory triple cone of gelato, a guy stopped me in the gelato store (an old favorite) and said he was a lawyer and was *IN* the courtroom this morning (imagine THAT coincidence) and said my story was really moving and I did a good job of presenting it. Also, dad pointed out that during the preceding 5ish seperate cases of shoplifting hearings, the courtroom was atwitter with hushed whispers, but when I was giving my statement of how this has affected my life, the courtroom was silent. So I figure I'll share what I said:

"My name is Jeff Knox. Please let me know if my speech is not clear.

Your honor,

Here is what her decision to drive drunk physically cost me.
I now have double vision where the 2nd image moves in relation to the 1st depending on where I'm looking. So if I keep my eyes on something but move my head, the 2nd image moves. It took me MONTHS to learn to walk with that as an obstacle. And there's no single spot where the two images could ever overlap correctly since the second one is slanted about 30 degrees.

My reflexes are slower now. I've only seen this demonstrated when I was going to the driving rehabilitation center and they have a machine to test that, but it's obvious to everyone else.

With the double vision and the slower reflexes, I'm not driving. And that clearly affects where I can live, or else always pay for taxis everywhere and I don't know that I can always afford that. And in addition to not CURRENTLY driving, I may never drive again-- who can say. I'll probably end up moving to a city with better public transportation, such as New York or Washington.

Balance issues-- that's the other reason it took so long to regain the ability to walk. Even though I'm walking now, my balance still isn't good. I almost always move over to use the hand rail on stairs. Since my injury was obtained from hitting the ground with my right side, my right ankle on up was affected.

Another side effect of the brain injury is that I have random shakiness in my left hand, medically known as ataxia. It's to the point where I have adapted by doing as much as I possibly can with my right hand only, such as carrying glasses of water, or typing with mostly my right hand.

Memory issues: in addition to my difficulty making new short-term memories, after seeing many doctors, I've learned that I have trouble converting the short-term memories I do make into long-term memories. So you can tell me something, and there's about a 80% chance I'll remember it 5 minutes later, and about a 10% chance I'll remember it the next day. And I have an incredibly hard time recognizing faces that I should easily know.

I spent months trying to regain the employment I had, but it's clear that I've lost MANY skills I had. I was a computer programmer at the time of the wreck, and I've lost almost everything I learned in college, so that didn't work out when I tried to go back. I've not had a job since the wreck.

Thank you for hearing this case."