charlie98210

written in 2015

I am currently disabled with Lewy Body disease. It is a brain disease; a form of frontal temporal lobe disease. Its symptoms tend to mimic Alzheimers, although in my case the memory is not being destroyed. The neurons in the frontal lobes of my brain (which process my thought and access my memory) are shutting down and going dormant; sort of like a wiring harness in which more and more of the relays quit working and larger and larger areas of the network become inaccessible -- yet intact. Most of the damage appears to be happening in the frontal lobes, where cognition (thinking) occurs. Mostly the symptoms are loss of skills and mental confusion. There is no treatment for it and there is no cure.

I've drawn cartoons since I was a kid. Then in 1978 started doing stained glass. I began drawing my own designs, which increased in complexity. In 1995 I suffered a mild stroke and lost the strength in my left hand. Had to give up stained glass.

I then took up oil painting. And drawing freehand with the computer using Photoshop.

In 2006, the first symptoms of the dementia appeared. Alzheimers was ruled out as the dementia affecting me, neurologists deciding that I had some form of Frontal Lobe Dementia (the exact type would be diagnosed after I died, with an autopsy).

By 2007 I had lost most of my vocabulary and could barely form sentences and carry on a conversation. Thinking coherent thoughts was like walking through molasses. In the spring of 2008, my doctors prescribed Aricept, an Alzheimers drug, in an effort to combat the symptoms of my dementia. It wasn't suppose to work, but it did, although not completely. My thinking regained most of its speed and my communication abilities likewise came back, although I still get confused easily and sometimes freeze-up midsentence, cannot do math, and can only read a few pages at a time before the ability to recognize written words goes away (to return after twenty or thirty minutes of rest).

As it stands now, I can no longer hold a paintbrush and the muscle control of my fingers is so bad that I was forced to learn how to use a computer mouse righthanded (I'm a lefty). I hold the mouse with a claw-like grip, lock my wrist, and use my whole arm to move the mouse, rather than with just my fingers.

The hobby painting of models is done by bracing my hands against the table as much as possible to stop unexpected movements.

The latest project I've started is a comic book/graphic novel named

"The Year Everything Changed" which is in a sub-gallery, here, and on Facebook. While I can no longer write convincing fiction and prose, I can draw phenomenally well and the visual will be what carries the strip, filling in the emotional depth of the characters.

12/22/2020

Since I wrote the above, I have published a novel (available from Smashwords and also sold on the online Barnes and Noble book site as a Nook Book). It was a novel I had written back in the nineteen-nineties, back when there were no cellphones and other, common nowadays, technologies. It remained unpublished until 2017, when I rewrote and condensed it and self-published, first on Kindle at Amazon, then on Smashwords after Amazon cancelled my contract. In 2018, Barnes and Noble Nook Books picked up an option from Smashwords to sell my book online as a Nook Book. So far, I have sold around eighty copies and hope to continue to sell more (it is Missing Without A Trace: A Kelly Mitchell Mystery, link at bottom of bio).

Just after the final editing of the first ebook edition, I had a series of TMI strokes. The first took out the motor control of the muscles of my left leg and both ankles and feet. It took about six months to learn to walk again. Then, a year later I had a second mini stroke, doing the same thing the first one did. Three months later I had a third, and for about six hours I was completely paralyzed. This went away in less than twenty-four hours, but it affected my writing and cognition so that writing prose causes headaches (migraines).

I closed down the web comic, The Year Everything Changed, and shelved writing the sequel to Missing Without A Trace (after struggling to complete four chapters). I am still painting and improving my ability to do portraits.

https://www2.barnesandnoble.com/w/missing-without-a-trace-charles-schiman/1128809896?ean=2940155270386

www.theaftd.org/