Athelstan update

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

And has just reminded me that I haven't posted on Athelstan in a while.
Since there is some news, I'll do so now.

As some of you may recall, Athelstan, one of Lojban's main leaders, suffered
a brain injury in an auto accident in February.  He has slowly worked back
into consciousness, and then with therapy, towards regaining some semblance of
a normal life.  He was discharged from inpatient status in July, and went to
live with his elderly parents (who are Christaians with a conservative
lifestyle, quite the opposite of the way Athelstan has lived since I have
known him).  He was able to pay a short visit to LogFest last August, which
was the last time I reported his status.

He has been in daily therapy since then, and has made some progress.  He still
moves, walks, and talks slowly, and does not have very good coordination.  I
fear his calligraphy skills may never return: he doesn;t even try to write
unless he has to.  I gather from what his parents say that most things that
require physical coordination, or things that require more than one mental
conscious activity at a time are still beyond him.  He apparently can make
reasonable decisions as long as the choices are binary, but with open ended
decision-selections, he either chooses irrationally (on the basis of what he
wants at the moment, perhaps), or is completely at a loss.

Meanwhile, due to their differences in attitude and lifestyle, the stresses
between A. and his parents have been growing.  He wants out, and to resume what
he thinks is a normal lifestyle (though to put it frankly, he is far from
capable of any normal lifestyle yet).  Maryland's indigent medical system (
(Medicaid) has just given him his out, perhaps.  He is being discharged from
his current therapy program as of tomorrow.  He is apparently trying to use
this situation as his opportunity to go back to work at some (low-paying
probably) job that will give him back his "freedom", and will probably move
back to the DC area from Baltimore.  If he can work out the finances, he may be
down here in a week or two, but his parents are hoping that financial realities
will force him to stay up there till around February - not because they want to
control his life, but because the more time he has to regain mental skills, the
more likely he will be able to make it on his own.  The few months might also
give him time to qualify for some long term disability income, a safety net
that may make his attempt to regain independence more likely to succeed.

Meanwhile, he has had a steel plate put in his skull to replace that removed
in surgery to treat his brain injury.  Also, using a large amount of money
donated by friends at a Clam Chowder concert last spring, he is going to be
able to have his mouth rebuilt: due to the accident, and preexisting dental
problems, he has had to have several teeth removed this year and only has a
few left.  The dental work being done will be minimally cosmetic to keep it
cheap (doing the job 'right' and 'pretty' would cost over $10,000).  The
donated money will also pay legal bills, and other expenses, and may also
be used to cover some of the things A. needs to get started on his own again.
The money is being handled as a trust, due to the complicated rules  that
permit him to have indigent medical care, and the fact that his father, who is
retired, has no means to cover even a fraction of the bills if someone other
than the state must pay them (his doctor bills probably are sevral hundred
thousand dollars already.

As for Athelstan and Lojban: he is still interested,and asked me a few weeks
ago for the updated gismu list, which I gave him when I took the kids to meet
him 2 weeks ago.  But frankly, I do not expect him to resume significant
Lojban work in the near future; things have moved along a lot in 10 months
that he has missed, and left him behind, but more importantly, Athelstan has
always seemed unwilling to risk the criticism of being severely in error
on technical matters, and may be unwilling to try anything more than
rudimentary usages until he is confident that he has totally mastered them.
As most of you have seen on this list, even the best among us make mistakes
and suffer confusion among our readers who read things differentlt than we
intended.  That is how you learn a language: by making mistakes.  But I'm not
sure  that A.'s ego is up to the point that he can live with the mistakes
that he must make if he is going to learn from them.  I hope that I'm wrong,
but have seen no evidence to indicate so.

People who want to write to A. may do so care of his father:

Athelstan
c/o Mr. William Palmer
1219 McCurley Ave.
Baltimore MD 21228

If you write to him, be especially detailed in identifying yourself.  His
memory of things before the accident is fairly minimal, and he needs lots of
memory hooks to place an event, aperson, or a situation.  The more information
you provide him, the more likely it will be that you will help him reconstruct
the jigsaw puzzle of his memory that remains shattered.

I will keep people informed; I wish I could be more optimistic, but the early
termination of his therapy, and his efforts to move out into a real world
that he probably will have trouble coping with, has be pessimistic.  But then
I am a parent that just had 2 kids start school in a language that they neither
speak or understand and they are doing fine - so maybe I'm just a worry wart.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                      lojbab@grebyn.com
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273