For those who aren’t aware, a “fishbone” diagram is otherwise called a “cause and effect” diagram or “Ishikawa” which was created by Kaoru Ishikawa (1968) that show the causes of a specific event.
I studied such things when I was functioning as a normal healthy person (pre-incident) and whilst in this case I have not utilized this diagram in its correct function, it still allows me to make an attempt in providing you with a visual display or explanation of why I continue to refer to the relationship between my Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and the many ailments that stem from this. Sorry to all the Six Sigma people out there frowning at my fishbone diagram use.
None of the ailments that I have listed were pre-existing and were a result of my ABI. Whilst there are other ailments, I have restricted the list to save confusion.
What I have found throughout my rehabilitation journey which includes the first 12 months of self discovery and self awareness, is that it is extremely difficult for my rehabilitation to be successful if one or two ailments are counter productive against the other. As an example, attention and concentration are the foundation or the first tier of the rehabilitation journey that I need to climb. The journey was and still continues to be very difficult whilst I have low attention and concentration levels. As you would be aware in your own lives, if you are not able to concentrate or maintain your attention on a task, then chances are the task may not be executed as you had planned unless you enable yourself to snap out of a semi-conscious state and focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately for me there is no snapping out of it, I am what I am therefore strategies and coping mechanisms need to be learnt otherwise there is no progressing forward.
Another example is when I read I am slow, don’t understand all word meanings, have difficulty with sentence context and structure as well as skipping and mixing words within a sentence. So speech therapy can address such areas of weakness or losses however with having short term memory loss as another ailment that is a result of an ABI makes life difficult because I cant remember what I have read. This then introduces anxiety and mental fatigue for whilst you are trying your heart out, it feels as though your always two steps forward, five steps back.
People ask me what its like having an ABI and I usually reply that its like having a bad back. Why, because most people assume that if they can’t see, it doesn’t exist.
I currently have a couple of friends with expertise in the fishbone diagrams (Six Sigma) that are working on a fishbone diagram which will look at the root cause of my Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and will share this on my website as soon as possible. This diagram will be very enlightening for those working in a highly stressful job and will allow you to compare with your own work / life balance and hopefully identify work stress indicators. I’m very excited about this for I truly believe this can make a difference to someone in preventing them from going down the same health and wellbeing path that I did. I shall keep you all posted. Look out for Fish Bone (2).
