Positive Emotion I Feel

What positive emotion do you feel most often?

I wake up each morning and I feel contented because I had a good nights sleep. ‘Why?’ you may ask. Back in June,1998, I contracted Encephalitis and was hospitalized for 8 days. When I was discharged from the hospital, my life had changed dramatically and permanently.

I had the ability to close my eyes and tell someone how to correctly spell a word without making a mistake. I was dubbed a walking Miriam-Webster Dictionary. I also could tell someone what extension to a company, shop, or individual before I was hospitalized, but not after I was hospitalized and discharged. I could no longer do these 2 things at all.

The biggest change was my memory. Where before I never forgot anything, now I might do something today and not have any memory of what it was I had done.

This was the beginning of the end of my Air Force career. I was evaluated by Air Force doctors and the verdict was that I was not fit mentally or physically to remain on active duty. I was medically retired at 40 percent disability. The DAV took my DD-214 and my medical records to the regional VA office and in 1997, the VA increased my disability status to 80 percent. Because I was also found to be ‘Individually Unemployable’ and that raised my VA disability status to 100 percent. I received VA Compensation backpay and a monthly VA Compensation amount over 5,000 dollars on the first day of the month ever since.