Carlo Lingiardi

2012-01-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

NEW DEVELOPMENT

Having done the surgery to elongate the Achilles tendon I’m expected to be able to walk with confidence but the spasticity I still have at the arm takes away my confidence and makes the pain still unbearable, so the other day I went to the Orthopedic Institute in LA where I had several X-rays done at the shoulder and I saw a very experienced surgeon who saw the large heterotopic ossification I have near the scapula and has treated cases like mine with surgery for several years already, starting on the East Coast in PA.
Then today I tested the Bioness stimulator for the leg, a system that delivers electrical stimulation in a precise sequence, which then activates the muscles to lift the foot to take a step. The result may be a more natural walking pattern (gait) combined with enhanced stability and confidence, this will help my brain reconnect its pathways with muscles and nerves to permanently restore my mobility, after the shoulder surgery I’m going to test the system for the arm too that stimulates the appropriate nerves and muscles of the forearm and hand and helps to reeducate brain signals to restore function in weak or paralyzed muscles.
In short my fight to regain control of the body is now being helped by innovative technologies that are going to help me rebuild scope and meaning of my life.

2012-01-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

75 MONTHS

6 years and 3 months ago my life pretty much ended as I had lived and wanted it to be, so for the longest time after the coma I was convinced that my accident was a punishment from God for something I had done and in my mind only cheating on the love of my life, Michele could be a sin that deserves Godly punishment, however after having asked to almost all the women I ever worked with I was told that not only I was never improper but I was also someone who nobody would even think to make jokes to women in my presence.
So having eliminated the idea that my accident was a punishment from God for something I decided that no god exists and I became a real atheist, as such I concluded that my accident was just the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and everything that has happened after is the expression of qualities and values of those close to me affecting my life.
I started to hate Michele’s lover, in my mind he’s someone who knows very well about brain injury and takes advantage of my tragedy only for personal gains and as such deserves my punishment with his life.
But now that with the new year my Catholic faith is back, mostly for realizing the real existence of Jesus and the worldwide power of the Catholic church I’m thinking that because of the immediate interruption of my leadership in life and that God had nothing to do with preventing my accident or shorten my recovery, it's just the attempt of mankind to humanize God that makes people think that by praying bad things can be avoided or that recovery becomes faster, I'm now convinced that the human brain has the real power to make miracles happen and that real God is the initiator and order-bringer to the universe.

A big vacuum was created with my sudden inability to be present and that confused every person who knew me and made them act irrationally and without any hope of my possible recovery.
So what now fills my soul is pity for those who by losing me lost their sense of direction and ability to distinguish right from wrong, 2012 is going to be the year not only of my return to my productive and caring life but also the chance for those who abandoned me to return in my care and thoughts.

2011-12-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

MOBILITY

After hoping and waiting for 3 years to regain independent walking ability I’m now am testing an electric wheelchair and experiencing already wide range mobility and independence, soon I’ll do my own grocery shopping and take my children to the nearby mall to shop and eat in a nice place.
Now that I know how much independence and options to do things I realize that I’ve been a dreamer for too long, maybe I’ll never walk again but nothing will stop me to do what I want.
In few weeks I’ll know my out-of-pocket expense is going to be to have this electric wheelchair be mine and I still hope that your donations will make it much easier.

2011-12-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

CHARITY

It was in July of this year that I opened a donations account with NTAF, now called HelpHopeLive and I was very hopeful to receive substantial donations from companies that I either worked for or did business with especially because each dollar donated to me can be deducted from corporate taxes that must be even paid quarterly.
As I’ve said before this is to me the best way to regain control on how our tax money is used, rather than let our government (Obama) use it for illegal immigrant education and/or hospitalization.
Instead I received donations from private individuals who know me and want to help.
So my donations account total is missing one or two zeros and I both can’t buy a minivan or comfortable car for who helps me to drive nor plan to go for several weeks to the PSR gym near Los Angeles.
Since now it’s Christmas time, time to make gifts I hope that the companies that know me because I did business with them will take control of their tax money that must be paid in few weeks often on the assumption of how business will be next year.

2011-12-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

ME AT WORK

Without writing a resume I’m going to give an idea of how I came to California as president of TEVA sandals http://www.teva.com/index.aspx It was 1996 when I asked to be transferred to the USA by the company that I had worked for 4 years already which was http://www.gore.com/en_xx/ I had the position of business leadership of the footwear segment and the fact that many Italian shoe manufacturers had distributors here plus that many American companies had productions in Italy made my presence at the worldwide headquarters of Gore very convenient because I was able to understand the reason of certain decisions made by either party and make sure that the business could grow for all involved. Being able to directly communicate with the Italians was certainly a big plus because even communicating in good English doesn’t allow to get the feeling of what really matters sometimes. After I took a presidency level position at GEOX US. http://www.geox.com/ I introduced this brand in the American distribution market. In this company I learned how to be in complete charge of a business, from distribution to marketing to finances with an eye on legal matters. It was September of 2003 when I moved with my family to the beautiful Lyme in NH to work as VP of the footwear division of Tecnica USA http://www.tecnicausa.com/ Where I worked until I went to work at TEVA in Santa Barbara.

Here are few links about my career:

http://www.advfn.com/news_Deckers-Outdoor-Appoints-Carlo-Lingiardi-as-Teva-Brand-President_12162790.html

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-miscellaneous/4478609-1.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_August_12/ai_n14891494/

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Deckers+Outdoor+Appoints+Carlo+Lingiardi+as+Teva+Brand+President-a0135061089

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-135475768.html

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-miscellaneous/4449297-1.html

http://business.highbeam.com/Search?searchTerm=carlo+lingiardi&searchType=Article&currentPage=0&orderBy=

2011-12-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

WALKING TRAINING

Now that the cast is removed and replaced by a much lighter plastic casting with a rubber bottom that doesn’t slide I’ve started my training to walk again with the help of a Livingston trainer who had me try the hemi-walker like in the picture and even if it isn’t as simple as my wood cane it’s much more stable and gives me much confidence.
As always I’m dreaming to soon be able to walk to the nearby mall and also to fly to distant places by airplane, I intend to go see my family in Verona as early as this coming Easter and go again with Brent and Giorgia in the summer next year.

2011-11-30T18:30:00.001-08:00

HEMI WALKER

As I wait to have the cast removed I’ve started walking with a Livingston trainer at home who brought me a walker to use for feeling secure as I walk.
Never I could imagine that something so cumbersome would give me such a feeling of safety and balance, I was convinced that a simple cane could give me the feeling of stability needed but now that I’ve tried the walker I see why it’s so much used and advised.
I’m buying a new one to start using as much as possible while soon I’ll receive an electric wheelchair that’s going to let me go shopping by myself and play with my children when they come to visit me.

2011-11-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

CASTING

Now that the Achilles tendon elongation surgery is done I have to be in a cast for about 6 weeks and soon I’m going to start walking with a trainer who is going to come where I live for about 3 weeks, twice a week and after I’ll go to the rehab gym where I went several months ago.
I’m told that I’m still at risk to develop muscle spasticity therefore I’m going to have to wear a brace for my whole life not to let my muscles pull again in the wrong way.
Having this cast has made my mobility with the wheelchair in my apartment uneasy because I must keep the leg extended over a support but at least I have no pain whatsoever, now my focus is on starting to walk again and I’m concerned that because I can’t control the leg I’m getting wrong sensations about how I’m standing and in what position it is.
Like everything in medicine I’ll know how much this surgery has helped me only after the cast will be removed in few months, only God can predict the effect on my body of this surgery, at most a doctor can give a good guess.
In the meantime my daughter Giorgia is painting the cast and I love to be wearing her work of art.

2011-11-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

MY LIFE PURPOSE

As the head of my household I always had complete comfort for my family, mainly financially but also in terms of environment to live in, both inside and outside, as goals.
Now that as a brain injured disabled who had to divorce I rearranged my life purpose and its focus on my children, Brent and Giorgia, besides my physical rehabilitation.
My children were born in an environment of total comfort and that’s what I’m going to ensure that they are going to have going forward, as long as I’m around.
A father’s love is more practical than the emotional of the mother and because of that I never imagined my own love to be the same than the one of their mother, but now I can see it and since my children are going to be teenagers soon I want to be present at their side with my experience and protection, that only a real father can provide without ties.
I see my daughter Giorgia as a purebred Lingiardi, not only she has my same skin in color but reacts also in my same way to anything.
Brent too is very determined and focused on what he wants and can do, in short my children can’t be confused with anyone else and my traits are very visible and recognizable.
Given that I’m a 3 times life survivor I may have another 40 years of life, so like my own father I will see my grandchildren in their teenage years.

2011-11-12T22:12:00.000-08:00

THE CONCEPT OF THE GAP

The distance between the top of mount Everest and the bottom of the Marianas trench is several miles and it’s impossible to imagine to fall from that peak into the trench directly, however that’s what I experienced, I fell from the top of Everest = company president, to the bottom of that trench = traumatic brain injury.
What’s even worse in my case is to have lost my beloved wife, who replaced me with someone else whose ethics are below that trench, if even possible.
When a mistake in life or at work is made, one recovers by confronting its results and impact on others, then life can go on enriched by the lesson taught by the mistake itself.
In my case however I’m not the victim of a mistake of mine, I surely can see its impact on others but there’s nothing I can learn from it, all I see is the huge gap I must cover to be back on the top of my world.
While my focus is on the goal to be there again my blood boils in my veins because of what’s around me, not clear air and untouched nature but a cheating wife with an unethical bastard and my two very young children lost in the confusion of my replacement.
My fight to recover and close this gap is the hardest trial I’ve had in life so to overcome it is going to show both what type of climber in life I am and my perspective when I look at others.

2011-11-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

TIME REFERENCE

My whole life I’ve been always very impatient, to the point that if something didn’t happen in a very short time – hours or days at most – I’d force it to happen personally.
This brain injury has forced the change of my time expectation because it’s been too many years that nothing happens when I want or expect it to.
I’ve been wanting and trying to walk for 6 years but since I’m still on a wheelchair I’ve had to accept that even if a 2 years old can do it, I can’t expect to walk very soon, no matter what I do to regain this ability.
What’s positive about this change in my ‘time reference’ is that I don’t want nor plan to terminate my ex-wife’s lover, I’m just focusing on 6 years from now, when my son Brent will be 18 and Giorgia 16.
I’ll be “midway in the journey of life” as Dante says in his comedy, or 54 with at least 30 more years of life expectation, in case that selfish unethical lover will still be around I’ll do what God will inspire me, my marriage was in a Catholic church and what God unites no man can separate, even legally so since the lover did separate my Godly union, his own are the responsibilities and consequences.

2011-11-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

MY FIGHT CONTINUES

I finally had the Achilles tendon elongation surgery, it was after too many years of hopes that some other non-medical therapy could help my body fix the brain and therefore no more spasticity.
Since the whole medicine science is a big guess exercise nobody can tell how I’m going to be 6 weeks from now, once the uncomfortable and unpractical cast I have on my lower leg and foot will be removed.
My shoulder and hand spasticity however is in a much more complicated and risky part of the body, so nothing yet can be done to release it, I dream to regain the control of the hand to be able to play my piano and have even more balance when walking.
I’ve researched what can be done for the spasticity in this area but I keep finding what I had tried already years ago, Botox injection that due to my body defense mechanism isn’t effective at all.
The doctor who injected me with it had guessed that maybe a different Botox strand could be efficient on me, but the whole battle was dropped for sad reasons.
So now Botox looks like my unique option to free my body from spasticity, it requires attempts and only a determined patient like me, with a supporting doctor like mine can take on this other guess battle to free my body from what my injured brain can’t fix.
This is the idea of going around an obstacle that blocks the way, I hope that Botox will be what helps my body go around my injured brain, which seems very natural given that it’s the body that holds the brain inside.

2011-10-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

ARTURO BENEDETTI MICHELANGELI

The sister of my grandmother married this very famous pianist and lived to old age in Switzerland, I never met neither of the Michelangeli but I was told that this far parenthood gave me my love for piano with the playing ability, I find it wonderful that even now in this second millennium there are passionate people who study and research my relative, who came to do concerts in Los Angeles many years ago and there is still memory of his playing.
If and when I’ll overcome the hemi paresis that makes my left hand not manageable I intend to start again with my piano playing and do a full immersion in what J.S. Bach composed and became very famous thanks to Glenn Gould, my other idol in piano playing.
I put here on the right few links to sites that talk about my relative who is still famous in the artistic environment.

2011-10-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

BARRIER TAKEDOWN

Very soon I’m going to have the tendons elongation surgery that I should have done years ago, if my wife at the time would have listened to my confidence that I can overcome my injury and therefore be the husband and father that God put me on Earth for.
I’ve been considering the spasticity a real physical barrier that doesn’t let me walk and move the affected limbs, so by removing this barrier I’m sure that my life will return to be acceptable and productive again, as it should be.
Of course I’m going to deal with the many changes in my family and I intend to return to be the caring and present father to my children, who are victims of my injury for the changes that they had to face.
2012 is going to be my “born again” year and many concepts that I developed after the injury will change, such as the atheism that I had developed in the attempt to find a reason for having lost all I ever did in my former successful life.
I’m now reading the Proverbs in the Bible to understand what people 3,000 years ago already knew and I plan my next 40 years of life in the success that I never lost.

2011-10-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

OPPORTUNITIES

In my research for God I have developed the concept that what a God does is give opportunities, I can pray for hours each day for years asking to be recovered of my brain injury and what God gives me is the opportunity to find the way to best recover, as I’ve said before miracles don’t really happen, it’s our human mind that with focus and concentration makes something very desired to happen and there’s no scientific explanation for that, so here too it’s God that gives the opportunity to our brain to materialize something that’s either needed or wanted.
My injury and subsequent disability is the God-given opportunity to understand life and people at a level that I never even thought possible and that will be my gift to my children and future generations.
This new understanding of how my life has changed and has become gives me the new opportunity to accept things and people that I wanted to kill, or physically eliminate because I considered sinfully wrong.
Now that God – or my own brain – have given me the opportunity to clear my thinking my recovery is going to proceed full of energy, since I’m not wasting anymore any of it on anyone or anything else.

2011-09-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

TENDONS SURGERY

In October I’m hoping to have the tendon surgery that I should have done at least 4 years ago, if I hadn’t fallen in love with HBOT.
As experienced doctors have told me, if HBOT really helped recovery from TBI, it would be offered already in every hospital in the world.
So now while I remain determined on my recovery, I’m focused on “official” medical ways to overcome my limitations in the walking disability.
Just like the body never stops to heal itself, the brain never stops to rewire even when injured, so with expert physical therapy I’m going to accelerate the rewiring of the brain to the hemi paretic part in my body.
The picture here shows a surgical technique to elongate a tendon and while it’s just an example I have big hopes to return to independent mobility before year end.

2011-08-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

NTAF

NTAF is a nonprofit that helps families address financial hardships arising from uninsured medical expenses related to transplantation and catastrophic injury (spinal cord, traumatic brain).
To help with some of my uninsured injury-related expenses, a fundraising campaign in my honor has just been established NTAF. It is my hope that some of the contributions will allow me to continue my rehabilitation by attending Progressive Strength Recovery in Irvine.
Given that every dollar donated to the NTAF fund in my honor is
tax-deductible, I'm hoping that through your generosity I can one day resume a work normal life and once again be a productive wage earner. I have too much cultural and business knowledge not to put this experience to good use.

2011-07-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

ABOUT GOD

I grew up in Italy, the country of the Vatican and growing up I received all the Holy Sacraments so when I got out of the coma I said that I had spoken with Jesus Christ who asked me if I wanted to return living on Earth or cross the death river, I was told that I replied that I had 2 children who I loved so very much that I wanted to continue living, that’s when Jesus warned me that coming back to Earth would have been very painful but I thought that nothing can’t be managed by some Tylenol.
I also thought that I must have committed a bad sin and all I could imagine is that I had cheated on my wife, but after having asked to very many women who used to work with me I realized that cheating wasn’t a sin I ever committed, and I later learned that my accident isn’t a godly punishment for something I had done or thought.
Since I grew up with the teachings of a protective and caring God I started to think that since my accident wasn’t a punishment for any sin I may have committed, I rejected the idea of a loving and caring God and became an atheist and started a research about religions and faiths.
That’s when I discovered Pascal Wager who said something very logical and full of sense, which represents now my faith and belief
1. One does not know whether God exists.
2. Not believing in God is bad for one's eternal soul if God does exist.
3. Believing in God is of no consequence if God does not exist.
4. Therefore it is in one's interest to believe in God."

2011-07-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

MY NEVERENDING FIGHT

My endless research for a cure to an injured brain had me find and contact the director of the brain injury program at UCLA.
When I met him I had with me all the MRI’s ever done on my brain since the time of the accident, October ’05.
As he was studying them he asked me several questions about my current and past life, education, medications and interests.
He also prescribed an post-injury rehab program that includes tendons surgery and physical training together with TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation.
He told me that my disability is in the cortical part of the brain, which explains the hemiparesis but the neurological ability looks good.
This was the first time in years that I meet an experienced neurologist who gives me hope to recover.
He told me to work and asked why I’m not working, he said that I must work because I can get my brain to work properly.
I’m now working on the post-injury rehab program that should have started 4 years ago with the support of my family here, and I’m going to celebrate its successful completion with my children.

2011-05-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

PHYSICAL THERAPY

While I wait for the orthopedic surgery to my tendons that have had spasticity, have been tense for almost 6 years I go to the gym at the college here at a course for disabled people, they have very good and helpful equipment to use and even if I’m still waiting for the surgery I exercise what I can anyway.
The major soft tissue procedure involves lengthening the muscle-tendon unit. This usually involves cutting the tendon where it overlaps the muscle belly. This stretches the entire unit which improves the length of the extremity.
I’ve signed up already for the fall session at this gym and I hope to go after the surgery so that I will retrain all the muscles that haven’t moved in so many years.
I plan to also go to PSR progressive strength recovery in Irvine in August where I’ll learn the best exercises to do.

2011-05-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY

My whole life was dedicated to excellence, when at school I was a very good student and then I had a great career working in the top management of international footwear companies.
In October 2005 as I was exercising riding my bicycle I got run over by a minor without both driving license and adult supervision.
I had just started to work as president of a brand in the Deckers group but the accident gave me traumatic brain injury and I lost my job and the ability to work.
This injury has devastated my life, that of my family in Italy and here, the oldest of my children is my son who was 6 y/o at that time.
The insult added to my injury is my wife falling in love with my former physiatrist in Santa Barbara, I hope her reasons were for desperation and survival instinct.
My two young children are told by their mother that her lover is a “father figure”. They are very confused because they still see and love me as their real father while they are forced to replace me with someone who will always have plenty of TBI victims that never get better and prove him right and successful in his world, a really unethical individual.
I was told of the possibility that this individual is available to my now ex-wife because being a doctor has the instinct to help those in need. What shocks and infuriates me is that it’s common knowledge that TBI victims can improve with family help, all I’ve been doing for years is suffer for jealousy and not being able to educate my children directly.
This insult hurts much more than my injury itself because is really irreparable, I’m now divorced with the goal to take care of my children, who are victims like me.

2011-05-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

ME AND BEETHOVEN

Beethoven's personal crisis centered around his deafness. The period is noted for large-scale works expressing heroism and struggle; these include many of the most famous works of classical music. Middle period works include six symphonies (Nos. 3–8), the last three piano concertos, triple concerto and his only violin concerto, five string quartets (Nos. 7–11), the next seven piano sonatas including the Waldstein and Appassionata, and his only opera, Fidelio.
In learning about this magnificent composer’s life I realize that I’m very much like he was, his inability to accept his hearing disability makes him very close to me and my way of thinking.
Deafness is for a musician just like an athlete like me being hemiparetic, unable to even walk or swim.
While I’m not going to compose music with the idea to make it eternal I hope to be an inspiration for others with my fight to improve and heal my injured brain.

2011-04-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

ETHICS vs. MORALITY

The distinction between ethics and morality is based on a distinction between two types of human relations: thick ones and thin ones. Thick relations are grounded in attributes such as parent, friend, lover, fellow-countryman. Thick relations are anchored in a shared past or moored in shared memory. Thin relations, on the other hand, are backed by the attribute of being human. Thin relations rely also on some aspects of being human, such as being a woman or being sick. Thick relations are in general our relation to the near and dear. Thin relations are in general our relations to the stranger and the remote. Ethics, in the way I use the term, tells us how we should regulate our thick relations; morality tells us how we should regulate our thin relations.
For years I justified my wife for abandoning me after the accident and falling in love with my doctor as something done by a person in shock for the sudden and gigantic loss.
But thinking about the time factor I now realize that when someone for example breaks a leg, the immediate and strong pain can be confusing, but after some time both pain and shock go away and logic rules again.

My focus and determination to fully recover my brain injury has made me do very much HBOT and other medical procedures because I can’t accept that my young children live with unethical and immoral people who can’t teach by example anything decent.

2011-04-24T16:18:00.000-07:00

SURVIVING

My survival skills are very strong and keep getting stronger as I try to improve my disabled conditions.
I received extreme unction from a priest after almost dyeing three times for a reaction to a medicinal that is supposed to relax my spasticity.
There was a nun with me who explained that my coming back to life is very different from when I got out of the coma, at that time I told my father that Jesus had warned me of the pain to return in living earth and I thought that I could take care of it with Tylenol.
This time I knew exactly the kind of physical and emotional pains that I would come back to, however my immense love for my children made me want to do it and I don’t regret it at all, even if my pains are still all here.
I want to be at my children’s side to support, guide and give them teachings and instructions that are the result of my successful and respectful life.
They are going to give me the same joys that I gave to my parents when my life was still intact, I now am the source of their concerns and fears, which explains my determination to find the way to have my life as it was again.
My son Brent told me that he now reads the Bible at night and has learned by heart Psalm 23, this is the example that my love for him is like the love of God for myself and things are going to get better for sure.
I now understand that the love of a father is as deep and true as that of a mother, who generated the children inside herself with her own blood and genes.
My love for Brent and Giorgia is as big as God’s love for me.

2011-03-31T20:14:00.000-07:00

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

These are my parents about 50 years ago when they married, now my dad is 85 and still loves his wife, my mother as he did at that time. The saying in this title is true for my parents. They generated successful children, me and my sister Anna, who in their turn generated wonderful children who are going to bring forward the Lingiardi genes of intelligence and success. Until my accident I never imagined I would not be on the same path of happiness. I was convinced I had married someone who would be with me my whole life. Instead in the middle of my life – like Dante Alighieri wrote in his comedy – I had to realize that I had married someone completely different from my own culture who never had the education or examples of passion and dedication to somebody who does all he can to elevate her above anyone else. What pains me more than anything else is to see my young children not living now with these examples of the truths that influenced me in what really counts in life. My big hope is that in a few years my children will have matured enough and will have seen and learned about my life and it will be clear that I always kept my attention and resources on them as my parents always did for me and my sister to ensure their total comfort and security.

2011-03-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

MARCH 3rd

This is the date of my legal dissolution of marriage and I’ve tried to take off the wedding ring to somehow celebrate my freedom from legal ties, however the ring has created its own place in the finger and cannot be slid off it because the knuckle bone is much bigger than the ring diameter, clearly mother nature isn’t affected by human and religious laws, even if I’m told that lying to the priest who married us about not wanting to have children is reason for religious annulment.
This is yet another way that shows that what God united can’t be separated by people and the fact that we had two beautiful children confirms the permanence of my dedication to a mother who chose to replace me with someone who knows me well and doesn’t care if my soul and spirit suffer for taking my place.
The pain and torment for this loss added to many others is really bad since it cumulates with brain injury and only with focus on what’s positive and exciting my life can return to be exciting and productive again.
This is the result of the law of attraction, that works in life just like in the universe.
The more I focus my thoughts on what’s lost and how sad I am, the more pain and torment I generate in me, while if I think of my gifts and positive situations I attract positivity across the board.
My divorce is just a piece of paper while my children are real people with my genes and on them my focus and thoughts will concentrate so that the law of attraction can bring goodness.

2011-03-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

I’M GRATEFUL

Even if I’m broken in my body I’m very grateful and content to be alive after an accident that could have killed very easily anyone else.
I can see my children grow up and be their mentor even more than if I was able to work and this is what makes me very satisfied of all my efforts to become more able to do what I like.
After being angry and revengeful about the accident and its consequences I’ve reached the stage of acceptance and understanding, I accept that not even God could avoid the accident and understand that only my own positive feelings of hope can help my complete recovery.
I see life as a blank sheet of white paper that gets filled with writings of experiences and learning’s so while my paper of life is half full the ones of my children are still pretty much empty of writings and even if the last 5 years aren’t written clearly, I know that going forward will be etched wonderfully.
I’m starting a new career that must have existed in my genes that’s about teaching, just like many of my relatives and ancestors, my way of talking and explaining things is what’s used by teachers for centuries, so I’m letting nature take over what I’m best at doing since birth.
I’m now focused on the positives in my life, rather than being angry at the negatives and the losses, so in a way I focus on the abundance rather than scarcity, my positives are way more than my negatives.
My change of focus is soon going to prove beneficial to my physical recovery that is the gate to the emotional one.

2011-02-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

ITALIAN

In 2003 I naturalized as American citizen and in doing so I had to renounce my Italian citizenship, according to Federal laws but Italy has no issue of any kind with double citizenship, therefore I still have my Italian passport and I’m treated as Italian every time I go to my Consulate in LA.
I’ve recently become a tutor at the Ventura College where many students take Italian language courses and as tutor I can help them study my mother-language and I’m hoping to teach my culture too, because I feel it at the roots of the Occidental culture which reflects our way of living and understanding life as it is now.
Italy in fact is a different country not only for the language, its culture is very different too and only a native Italian who lived there for 33 years can explain what’s different and why.
This tutoring makes me feel like I’m a producer again, even if it isn’t of money, I think that producing knowledge is a higher level of production.
My accident completely transformed my life and after mourning its losses for 5 full years I now see what’s new isn’t bad at all.

2011-02-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

FATHERHOOD

My own father has been taking care of me since I was born, and of what I do and my family as I grew older, he is concerned and takes care of me even since I’ve had the accident no matter that he is in his 80es and has been living off of his retirement for decades.
He is the model to which I refer to and take example from, I’m thinking of my son Brent and I’m concerned with the difficulties he has because I’m not living with him and is influenced by wrong examples of others.
Brent is still very young and I can predict that 10 years from now I will be at his side when he works and gets married just like my own father has always been.
The love of a father for his son is different from the one of the mother which is primarily emotional. Fatherly love is rational and objective with the goal to give understanding and instructions about life.
My own career and success at work and in my family have made my father proud of how he raised me, the choice that my wife has made to abandon me, go in my doctor’s arms and trash 15 years of my love and respect are hurting my father while he knows that I have nothing to do with being treated like this, I’m a victim just like I was in my accident, I do however have the strength to overcome my losses thanks to my father’s teachings about what to do when something breaks.
This is what I intend to pass on to my son in time, he will see and experience my fatherly love that goes back at least three generations.

2011-02-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

MY NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

There exists contemporary literature of the so-called NDE about experiences to be out-of-the-body while in reanimation or right after an accident, seeing God or going to heaven. Elizabeth Kubler Ross was a Swiss-born psychiatrist and author who gained international fame for her landmark work on death and dying.
I did have my own NDE at the time of my accident because when I went out of the 2 months long coma I told my father and friends who were with me that I had spoken with Jesus, who offered me to remain on the side of death or to return to living Earth, my choice and also warned me that returning on earth I would have had much suffering (?), that I thought I could neutralize with Tylenol.
Little did I know that my physical pain can only be managed with morphine and that my wife could cheat on me with whom used to be my primary doctor, no morphine or chemical medication exist to take care of the pain of losing a woman I married, who mothered my children.
I have a friend who professes himself as an atheist who told me that I saw Jesus because I was raised as Catholic, but if instead I’d be raised Buddhist I would have seen Buddha, or if American Indian I’d have seen a buffalo.
These atheistic explanations made me think for some time to the various possibilities, but later I understood that what I saw was my own personality, or soul with the cognizance of what was about to happen to my life.
I remain convinced that my wife fell in love with my doctor for the shock of losing me and I forgive her for this, everyone else around me judges her however very harshly.
I used to reserve my harshness and hate for my doctor, I now understand that what he does is part of his natural inclination to help people in need, or his patients. He is just a very weak person who has chosen to be dominated by my simpleminded wife who is very devastated by the pain for the loss of the life as I had arranged it to be. So I forgive him too.
My NDE has given me the time and interest to study with renewed passion ancient philosophy and Latin language for their connections to modernity.

http://www.near-death.com/

2011-01-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

THEY KNOW ME

My sister Anna and her husband Luca know me very well and share the sorrow and concerns of my parents and mine about my recovery and care for my children.
They are here for a full week to make sure that my things are in order to finalize my divorce and my going forward.
They know by direct experience about my passion for mathematics, love and understanding for the Baroque music composed by Bach and Mozart.
Anna shares my logic and consequentiality in life, so she knows well of my determination to recover well from my injury and can see me being the driver of my life like I’ve always wanted to be.
I’m starting to return to be productive by sharing some of my knowledge of being Italian and having both experienced and studied very much in life.
I learned at my own expenses that a therapy to repair an injured brain doesn’t exist yet, but I learned also very much about my ex-wife and how easy it is to take advantage of people devastated by injuries like mine.
I’m now able to put a positive spin to my tragedy by thinking that “in the middle of my life” (as Dante Alighieri wrote in his comedy) I was given the opportunity to see and understand how wasted my marital love and career to earn more have been, so now my going forward takes these learnings in great consideration and I feel free to develop in ways I never thought of any importance.

2010-12-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

LINGIARDI NAME HYSTORY

• Umberto was one of the very few engineers in the Fascist Army so went to bonificate the swamps around Rome and in Puglia, after doing this he was shipped as commander to Greece where he was imprisoned by the Germans (Nazis) and shipped by train to Dachau where thousands of Jews died with the use of gas chambers, as soon as he saw the opportunity to escape he walked from where he escaped all the way to his home in Brescia, therefore walking 1,500 miles alone.
• When he arrived to his front door and knocked on it, his wife didn’t recognize him and thought he was a beggar to send away, he had to talk for few minutes before being recognized as the husband by his own wife, he had lost 40% of his body weight in the months of walk while he had to hide his passage everywhere.
• Ernesto Lingiardi was one of the brothers who built organs all over the north of Italy and since the trademark of the Lingiardi organs was the ‘human voice’ they could produce he never stopped toning the lead canes of his instruments by mouth even when it became clear that by putting in his mouth these canes all made with lead was the reason for what later was called ‘mouth cancer’. He built the only organ in the region of Emilia, while all the other instruments had been placed for a century only in the north regions, near Pavia.
• Gianfranco when young sustained his family by going with his bicycle to buy grain from farmers out of town even when it became very dangerous, he once had to cross a square where a Nazi who was drunk was shooting to anybody he could see, Gianfranco crossed the square in his understanding of how best and safest to do it.
• Gianfranco older when studying math had his brother Alfredo checking on him and whenever he showed indecision the brother would punch his elbow on the hard table used. Still after 70 years Gianfranco has a cist in his elbow produced by the fisting his brother gave to him and he is proud of it and of remembering why he has it.
• Alfredo was Gianfranco’s older brother and used to be the CEO of Alfa Romeo which is still today an important brand for cars, he had this position for almost 2 decades and when he died hundreds of people were at his funeral. His son Vittorio is my very close cousin who teaches Psychoanalysis at the University of Rome.

2010-12-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

ERNESTO LINGIARDI

This is a picture of my great-grandfather Ernesto who died for cancer in his mouth because he insisted till death that he was giving a “human tone/voice” to the organs he was building and went in dozens of churches in Northern Italy.
This explains that my belief that TBI can be recovered is genetically determined, so maybe I’ll die still disabled but there’s no way that I may be convinced that my brain can’t be “fixed”.
Ernesto here is just one of the several examples of the determined confidence that’s been part of the Lingiardi for so many years, my grandfather in example in WWII walked 1,000 miles from Northern Germany back home in Brescia to hug his wife and be father again.
To have the clear and synthetic image of Ernesto Lingiardi like man and artist a diary of the family says: “for readiness of talent, consumed practicality in every branch, joined to good “artistic sense, we must recognize the source of prosperity”.

2010-11-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

MORE CLARITY

The accident with brain injury I had devastated my whole life of work and human relationships building plus my wife has reacted with the building of a new life for herself and my children that doesn’t include me, so I best stop here to list my losses, because I can write a book just listing them.
What’s developing now is my acceptance of my life as it has become and the end of my mourning the death of who I was, which gives me time and clarity of mind to analyze and plan my going forward.
I’ve understood that by doing HBOT by itself no miracle can happen, I must work on my body like I’ve done for many years in my past when I wanted to improve my performance doing anything, from sport to business.
I’ve been told by all my expert HBOT advisors to exercise my body very much and with physical therapists who know about the challenges of TBI
As the ancient Romans used to say, “mens sana in corpore sano” which means that good thinking and brain go together with a healthy body, so I’m also taking some special kind of sugars that help the communication among new and stem cells.
This injury has taught me a new way of managing time and expectations. I’ve learned that no longer I should have to wait few minutes or hours for something I want to happen, it’s now about whole weeks or years of work and sacrifice to get to the point I want.
This clarity helps me focus with confidence in helping my children become balanced and knowledgeable adults, which has become very important to me lately.

2010-11-07T15:09:00.000-08:00

DON’T BOTHER

As I went to Mass today in the beautiful and almost Italian church of the St. Thomas Aquinas College I realized that forgiveness is given by a somehow superior party, which I’m not with my wife Michele.
The pastor who did Mass spoke about the sanctity of marriage and it reminded me about what I said talking about divorce along time ago, “what God has united no man can ever separate” and this is exactly how Michele and I are united in marriage, her loss is almost as big as mine and all she has done to heal her own living (also called soul or pride) doesn’t bother me anymore, both our souls are united by God forever. My anger, search for rightfulness and vengeance only make my own life miserable and depressed, from being a powerful man in control of mine and several other lives I’ve become an easy prey for who takes advantage of those who cannot defend themselves, like me.
Of course I can say what my plans are when I’ll return to be able, but it doesn’t matter because nobody can tell if and when I’ll recover nor I can say what I’ll think of this part of my life at that time.
All I know for sure is that Michele is now and will be forever my wife who I’m never going to stop loving, even after death. Who else can ever say this?

2010-10-10T15:19:00.001-07:00

CONFUSED

My 2 children Brent and Giorgia are being forced by their mother to live a very confusing reality while being so young, they lost their father in a dramatic way and are being told that they have now a father figure to look at.
When I see them they are always happy, excited and grateful to be with me and I too am the same but every time someone else is present I’m always given the comment that it’s very noticeable their deep pain, anger and confusion for what they live.
I cannot notice this in them, I’m always very happy to be spending few hours with them but I know that as the time goes on they are going to be able to rationalize their confusion and it’s my commitment to help and support them completely in the years to come.
I’ve been studying the human kind since the homo sapiens appeared on Earth 40,000 years ago and I know that my concept of immortality isn’t unique at all, a pharos of ancient Egypt stated the importance to be remembered by following generations as a way to ensure immortality.
This is the importance of my children, not only because of their memories of me, but also because of my DNA and traits genetically passed on by me.
I want them to see me as the rock they can rely on whenever they need comfort and security, as their real father all is very natural for us and my fight to get rid of my disability is for them only, I lost all the rest already which tells me that it wasn’t so great.

2010-09-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

TIME WILL TELL

I’ve learned to think in terms of years rather than hours since my TBI and this does give me a very different perspective on life, mine and of the ones I love. Given that my father is 84 and I survived a bad accident I imagine very probable to have at least 25 more years to live which means that I’m going to see both my children married with children of their own, I’ll be a grandfather and I’ll be happy and proud to be one.
I can think also in terms of shorter periods of time, i.e. months and I’m still able to predict my future, like I’ve always done, on the basis of simple reasoning about situations and characters involved.
Only God can predict when and how well I’ll recover from my TBI, all I can do is keep my hope and fight continuous like they have been in the past two years. Together with my determination to complete recovery I have the confidence that my children will learn directly from me ways to approach life challenges and overcome difficulties of life, the Italian genes I put in them will to learn about these things and the importance of the existence of God that cares for us and helps our soul to have balance when all is upside down in life.
My wife Michele doesn’t want to be my caregiver and is tired of me fighting my disabilities resulted from TBI, based on this I know already what she’s going to do when her lover in very few years will be old enough to need help and how she will react to my improvements in the body that will let me walk and work again like I’ve always done according to the reason why God put me living on Earth.

2010-07-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

MY SITUATION

Everyone around me has been hit with a very similar tragedy to my TBI, my children have lost their caring and loving father being the active participant in their lives. My wife Michele, who I still love like I always have has lost all the comfortable life with the successful husband I used to be and as a consequence has replaced me with someone who knows me and professionally treats TBI victims.
Besides being mad for it, even if I know that it isn’t going to last very long, what makes me furious is to know that I could do the therapy – non-medical but still experimental – that can heal the injury of my brain, being supportive of the human healing resources without any of the side-effects typical of chemical medications, but since it’s experimental it isn’t supported by those who should be on my side.
On top of this all I’ve become someone who must count his pennies, given the very restricted income and the theft of both my savings and accident coverage, so I can’t do this therapy at all.
I’m now waiting for my divorce to finalize to be free to invest in my recovery and rehabilitation that will prove that my years of studying and talking with HBOT doctors and experts have given reasonable confidence of its success on me.
While my brain received a very large and devastating injury I’m still able to think logically, make decisions and act appropriately like I used to, besides the fact that all the time that is now available to me gives the opportunity to study the ancient philosophy that I loved learning about almost 30 years ago.
While doing HBOT correctly remains important, what’s now a priority is to return to be the caring father who can teach and direct his children in their growth, which in itself is another way of healing. I’m their father who is going to heal their feelings and minds while I heal my brain.

2010-05-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

LIVING CLOSER

My children could easily be spending more time with me except that my wife tries to keep me from living near them in Santa Barbara because her boyfriend is my former doctor .
My wife also doesn't want me living and going to the doctors in Santa Barbara because those I would see would become aware of what’s going on and want to know why he isn't my doctor anymore and the only reason is because he is dating my wife. So she has created the conditions to keep me away from my children and keep receiving my disability income while she says I cannot be with the kids without giving any reason. I pay an assistent every day who could just as well be where I'm living completing daily chores that my wife no longer does for me while my kids are with me.
All my doctors tell me that all I need to be with my children is someone for physical support, only my wife continues to say I’m mentally incompetent to be with my children. The judge who’s going to finalize my divorce will determine what I can do with them and my fight for joint custody is going to be settled by law, nobody can say now what the result will be and of course my bets are all on myself having joint custody, buying a home in the school district of my children and stop paying support to a wife who has decided to drop me and replace me with the man who doesn't know what warrior I've been since birth.

2010-05-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

MEDICINE "SCIENCE"

Take these following tests: go see 3 different doctors complaining of having an ache somewhere in your body and I predict that this will happen: 1) each doctor will ask you various questions not necessarily related 2) each doctor prescribes different medications from muscle relaxant to cleansing.
After few days return to these same doctors claiming that your pain is still present and the following again happens: 1) some change the prescription and may even give you what one other had prescribed already 2) some may say for you to change something in your living habits claiming some kind of relationship between your pain and something completely physical.
This proves that medicine is all about guessing and the doctors who have a big reputation are very lucky because their guessing end up correct the majority of the attempts.
My advice is for these doctors to play lottery often since they obviously have much proven luck.
Anywhere in this universe 1+1=2 and so on, our entire universe can be represented and explained in numbers and calculations, nothing to do with guessing and this explains very well why in youth I never had much interest in medicine but very much in advanced mathematics and physics, later my focus moved to economics and business that I always verified with numbers and mathematics.
There’s nothing that bothers me more than going to a doctor with an issue and having to hear he telling me : ”try this”.

2010-05-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

ABOUT BELIEFS

The vast majority of people in the world have a religious belief in a God and belong to a religion with rituals and various beliefs that can span from prayers and the act of praying to so called “holy people” that when Catholic are saints.
I grew up in Italy therefore Catholic so after being baptized I went through all the other sacraments and got married in church.
I do believe that the Catholic faith is the most important belief in the western culture and societies because it’s been part of how we are today.
When I got out of the coma 2 months long I’m told that I had said to have talked with Jesus who had asked me if I wanted to die or return to earth living but with pain, my thoughts were that any pain can be taken care by some Tylenol so my choice is clear and I’m told that depending of who I am and how and where I grew up I could have seen a bison (American Indian) or Krisna (Induism) so now I’ve developed the belief in human intelligence that is both immortal and so powerful that can facilitate miracle happenings that are what science cannot yet explain. Human intelligence is cumulative also because what we know today is immensely superior to what someone knew few centuries ago and it isn’t related to time spent studying on books, it’s what we are born with because our genes of today have been exposed to several centuries of both instinctual and scientific knowledge.
So any 5 t/o kid in 2010 is much more knowledgeable and intelligent than someone of the same age in year 1200 or less.
Following this reasoning my God is the human intelligence (cumulative and immortal) and only the mental concentration and desire of many people can make something happen that if impossible to explain with reason is a miracle.

2010-03-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

MY MRI REPORT

Here below is the prove spelled by maybe the most experienced doctor in HBOT that I’ve been always been right to fight to do it and that my effort isn’t going to have an end anytime soon:
After review of images available since 05 there has been a 50% decrease in the damage to your right posterior frontal and parietal area as shown on the current study. On the current MRI there is moderate enlargement of the ventricles which indicates you also have some small areas of atrophy throughout sides of the brain. Based on the pattern on the current MRI I would suggest you continue the HBOT. Through the years a patient with a similar injury to yours has had 464 HBOT all in hard side chambers and is still taking a series of HBOT several times per year and now can walk and talk.
The way I was put in touch with the doctor who has the most experience in this field is a story by itself and to me it shows that my own perseverance is the key to my success, as always.

2010-03-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

MISJUDGEMENT

I always in life since very young had interest, understanding and satisfaction by mathematics also at very difficult level, this explains why I took a Ph.D. in economics and even if my uncle was the first surgeon who transplanted a heart in Italy I never was interested in what now I call guess work, medicine is indeed a science but try to go to see doctors complaining of headache, you are told to do something different depending on the doctor you see and if you return saying that the advice hasn’t made the ache go away you’ll be prescribed several different prescriptions or even medical testing. Being a doctor isn’t like adding 2 plus 2, the 4 may be any kind of fraction or color or even timing, this is why good doctors are the ones whose guesses are more lucky than usual and it’s because they are only based on statistical numbers = the larger, the better.
The way to repair an injured brain hasn’t been found to date and I only hope that this second millennium will be when it will happen, like my neuropsychologist tells me if HBOT could do that, it would be already be used worldwide without doubt.
I discovered by myself the existence of this therapy 3 years after my accident and my misjudgment is based on the very many videos and articles that can easily be found in the web in several different languages.
After having fought for almost 3 years to do it I now must accept that even if this therapy would help my body to heal my brain I can never return to be the man I was, in simple words once simple skin is cut after it heals a scar remains and can never have the same characteristics as before, imagine when neurons are damaged or die, even if new ones are formed they have to learn from zero their duties.
So my dream to return to be as I was before the accident is a dream that can never be true, as I’m told the old Carlo died in the accident in October 2005 and the new Carlo may look the same and have the same personality and memories but is someone else who has to build a new and different life from the old one.
Even if I have been stuck on what miracle HBOT can do I grant this therapy this understanding and the appreciation of having a bearable life that can only – and will- get better.
So my focus is now on being close to my children who I’m very glad that they are still very young, I can pass on to them a lifetime of travel and work almost worldwide and I truly consider them my immortality because of my genes and what I can still teach them even by example.
I’m interested anyway to see what’s going to happen with HBOT and its medical coverage, I remain convinced that if I had done it few hours after my accident my life would be completely different now but God only knows the answer to this question, what’s important to me is that after many months of deep studies on atheism I found my faith in God again, which required me to take a leap without reason or explanation.

2010-03-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

MY MRI

The most experienced and knowledgeable medical doctor in HBOT while looking at my SPECT scans asked me to do an MRI, I understand because it’s like a roadmap that helps to see clearly the part of the brain that has no blood circulation, which isn’t shown at all in a SPECT, just a black part and I have so much of it that only an MRI can allow to clearly see the conditions of that part.
This is what my brain looks like in the MRI I just did and not being a doctor I don’t understand nor see any difference from the ones I had done right after the accident.
In a way I have SPECT scans both before and after having done HBOT but I hadn’t done any MRI since 2006, little after the accident so with this possibility to see well if my brain has changed in any way since I started doing HBOT I asked the doctor who is looking at all my tests to tell me if HBOT I did enable my body to heal my brain because if nothing good has happened I’ll stop with this therapy and use my little money in other ways since my very young children are going to need as much as I can give very soon.
I may sound selfish when I say that I’m hoping that my brain is going to show very much benefit from doing this therapy but in my mind I know that once I’ll return to be able to earn money by working my children will return to be the beneficiaries of all the money that I’ll earn and I still have.
Very soon Congress is going to decide about HBOT and its insurance coverage and I know who will talk to Congress and what kinds of data will be presented, it goes without saying that I’m hoping very much to have been right again in this also.

2010-03-13T21:20:00.000-08:00

I’M ITALIAN

I was born, raised, educated and lived in Northern Italy from 1963 through 1996 until 33 y/o and I naturalized American in 2003, my culture is still very much Italian therefore being furious about my wife having fallen in love with another man, who happens to have been my own doctor, explains why while I can understand the desperation and devastation of my wife to choose someone else to have at her side for protection and comfort, but it’s impossible for me and my mentality to find the reason why this man opened his arms to my wife and children.
I’ve been trying to think that him knowing well the devastation that TBI does to the victims and their families, he’s trying to give solace because of being a compassionate man, but every time I see how beautiful my wife is I can only think of her being intimate and kissing him with passion. He’s half the man that I am not only because he’s physically much smaller than I am but very much because he doesn’t have the cultural origins of mine, the Lingiardi go back in Italy 700 years at least and while the last name itself means the gravel in the turns of a river there are many ancestors that today are famous because of having made organ instruments still used of churches in the North West Italy.
What my wife will realize not too far in the future is the very big mistake she made by choosing to replace me with this half man, having lived and loved me for 15 years she will soon see that she cannot have again what I gave to her and because she has shown to me her real nature I won’t take her back ever again.

2010-02-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

NEW UNDERSTANDING

Maybe late I now realize that as well as HBOT can heal a brain when injured it doesn’t do miracles like recreating the dead neurons able to do exactly what they were doing before the injury.
In a way this isn’t difficult to imagine, just like when a healed skin wound leaves a scar that has different capacities as before, the same happens in an injured brain when healed, the functions and abilities of the dead neurons will be replaced by what the new ones must learn to do, and this is a process that is like what happens in an infant in time.
My mistake has been to think that by doing HBOT I could return to be the man I used to be, I did it by watching the very many videos in internet of victims of TBI saying that by doing this therapy they are back to what they were doing before.
While very disappointed not to receive miracles I’m happy to having believed in HBOT because I can think and reason very well again and I’ve been able – because disabled – to spend many hours each day in studying both philosophy and metaphysics that in my opinion have made me a better man than I was.
Since time isn’t important to me anymore I’m going to wait for my new neurons to learn how to make me walk because this is of paramount importance to me, I feel and act like I lost both legs in the accident but since I still have them and can move them too I see no reason to accept being a disabled who from a wheelchair must rebuild a life.
The life I’m going to have when walking is going to be as wonderful as the one I used to have, just different thanks to my increased knowledge. . Even if the time horizon has expanded my determination to make a return hasn’t decreased one bit, I feel I have too much at stake not to win this battle plus I want my children to learn from me that it’s determination, focus and tirelessness that give success and satisfaction. Winning a battle without fighting it can be nice but it doesn’t provide any satisfaction which is what motivates making a sacrifice even more than the prize itself. There’s so much that I can teach and show to my young children that I’m sure I can give them not only success but the right way to enjoy it.
Knowing how much harder and more I must work for the prize of normality makes me want it even more.

2010-02-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

THE THIRD HYPOTESIS

I put here the explanation of the “third hypothesis as my friend Iacopo (see below) suggested, you can go to his discussion site by clicking here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=299406397622&ref=mf

Historical and philosophical references and concluding remarks

I initially called this idea "the third hypothesis", referring to the number of lives that our "I" has the opportunity to experience: according to the atheists and believers of the three major Western religions, we have only one life (first hypothesis); according to Eastern religions contemplating reincarnation, each of us can experience more life, but each within its own "set of lives," separated by the "sets of lives" of other people (second hypothesis). The third hypothesis is that the lives experienced by our "I" are not only infinite, but are just "all", and therefore I must consider the life of every living creature I meet as a different experience of my own "I", just as my current life. The existing similar philosophic proposals are almost always related to the idea of unity achieved through a divine or cosmic "ONE" to which we all converge, but this weakens the true power of the third hypothesis, because it authorizes each to consider himself an individual detached from the ONE, considering any other living being as a separate experience of a different part of the ONE, which therefore does not concern him directly.

Following the conceptual revolution imposed by quantum mechanics, it was necessary to reconsider the universe by adopting an "holistic" vision approach, where all the parts affect each other, from a scientific perspective too. This led some physicists to adhere to pantheistic philosophies.
What ideas coincide exactly with the third hypothesis? If I think that the same "I" who now I feel like "individual" is exactly what every other living being feels like "his", then I am driven to have a generalized solidarity that does not exclude anyone. "I" am all the starving children, "I" am also every animal, every beaten dog in every corner of the earth, without any chance to escape any fate. The only option I have is to do my part to make the world becomes a bit better.

2010-01-13T10:41:00.000-08:00

MRI

After my accident did an MRI test on me on the 17th of October ’05 and since the hospital that did it is part of the same hospital network I requested this test at the one in Santa Barbara on CD for computer visualization and I received 2 MRI’s and 9 CT brain scans so I sent a copy of this CD to the specialist doctor both in nuclear medicine and HBOT who is going to use them to understand my SPECT scans done one year from each other.
This is the medical prove that will tell beyond any doubt if my brain injury can heal thanks to the presence of oxygen or if my brain is too injured to benefit from the creation of perfect condition to heal. What the doctor will tell me when looking at these tests will dramatically influence what I’m going to do going forward in life since my belief in HBOT has sacrificed relationships and use of money.
Of course since in my life I’ve always been right my mind is secure to have been correct so I’m not ready of what to do in the negative case. This brain MRI here isn’t mine, I’m unable to take a picture of mine from the disk I’ve been given so this is just an example.

2010-01-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

MY GENES

A gene is the basic unit of heredity in a living organism. All living things depend on genes. Genes hold the information to build and maintain their cells and pass genetic traits to offspring. A modern working definition of a gene is "a locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit of inheritance, which is associated with regulatory regions, transcribed regions, and or other functional sequence regions ". Incorrect colloquial usage of the term gene may actually refer to an allele: a gene is the basic instruction, a sequence of DNA, while an allele is one variant of that instruction.
Darwin used the term Gemmule to describe a microscopic unit of inheritance, and what would later become known as Chromosomes had been observed separating out during cell division by Wilhelm Hofmeister as early as 1848, the idea that chromosomes are the carriers of inheritance.
Genetics have been studied by very many scientists of the past such as Darwin, Mendel and Fisher who proved with plants and small animals their theories.
Parents create copies of their DNA during reproduction. These copies are modeled after the parent's DNA, so the newly-made DNA molecule will build a nearly identical new organism.
Common descent is the idea that all living things are related as distant family members. Every organism has distant ancestors in common. This explains why all living things use many of the same arbitrary molecules, when other molecules could have worked equally well. While evolution explains the differences between organisms, common descents explain the similarities. 1350 is the year of the first documented apparition of the Lingiardi last name that indicated the area of small gravels where a river turns.
Very little can be found about my ancestors and what they did for hundreds of years until year 1750 when the Lingiardi family in Pavia (near Milano) became builders of organs, musical instruments placed in many churches across the north of Italy that still exist today.
Going back generations in the research of people who influenced how we are today is fascinating, I remember my grandfather on my mother’s side who discovered by doing this search that he had a “doge” or king of Venice among his predecessors.
Doing this type of research takes very much time and money because there’s the need to research ancient archives that often aren’t available to the public plus in my own case they all are in the country of Italy which makes everything much less immediate and difficult so I’m hoping that one of my relatives over there may share my interest and do this research.
I’ve been told that knowing who the ancestors were can reveal many traits of the character and even give indications on how life is going to develop in the future even considering the obvious differences of the different times.
The little I know already about how one of my ancestors influenced my being is the one Lingiardi who kept on tuning lead organ canes by mouth even if he had mouth cancer, him being so stubborn in the face of what brought him to death explains my own inability to accept the disability that resulted from the brain injury. I’ve spent hundreds of hours studying the therapy – not yet medical – that I’m sure will help my body repair such injury and only complete evidence can convince me that I’m wrong. My own genes are the composition of the genes of many others with an history of rightfulness.

2009-12-22T16:59:00.001-08:00

NEW SPECT

I just did at the same hospital where I went more than one year ago another round of SPECT scans that will give the certainty also medically approved that HBOT can help my body heal the injury in my brain. Only a specialist can understand these images that mean nothing to me so I’m going to have two big specialist in this field look at the newest in comparison to the very first I did and have the MRI of my brain too which I’m going to take from the hospital that keeps it.
This way in a short time I’ll know for sure if my doing HBOT no matter what has been fruitful and correct or not.
If I’ll learn that I don’t had much benefit from this therapy many decisions about my life going forward will completely change and the money I’ve been investing and planning to use in this therapy will be completely diverted.
I of course don’t need to say that my focus in returning to both walk, travel and work can never be eliminated by being told that the one therapy in which I believe most cannot help, something else will come up eventually, being unable to cure a brain injury will be the medical victory of this second millennium.

2009-12-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

LONELINESS

The fear that human kind has had since inception is to be alone and it’s been this fear, borderline to terror that created the idea of the existence of the soul inside each of us and its continuous existence also after death or termination of life on Earth as we know it.
Dante Alighieri collected the stories about what happens to the soul after death and gained immortal importance because in writing about this in his Divine Comedy he used the language spoken by the peasants in the area of Tuscany that solidified the current Italian language over the many different dialects spoken at that time all over modern Italy that was being ruled by the countries on its geographical borders.
While Catholic Church embraced what Dante wrote in his Comedy as what really happens after death and how everything is organized, modern Italian language is solely his making.
However as I was saying the fear to be alone like we are at birth and death is still the fear that distinguishes human kind and even if the hope of the soul to continue a living experience very parallel to earthly living the fear of death remains intact and very much sorrow is still felt by every person who knows the dead one.
Very many philosophers since the ancient Greek’s time dealt with the fear of death and loneliness and I’ve been learning their thoughts and reasoning about this but only if the belief is in personal intelligence and strength of mind.
I’ve accepted that I’m alone also if I’m surrounded by people who care very much of me like for example my parents, family and those who love me dearly so it’s only my determination as a single individual that can make me receive what I want, not a miracle or someone else, just hard personal work with clarity of vision about the goal.
Often it’s the path to reach the goal that is most enjoyable and teaches the most than the goal itself and I must say that even if the path is very long I’ve enjoyed doing it surely more than the goal that’s something so common to be considered borderline trivial.

2009-11-18T15:31:00.001-08:00

D=S-M

This formula means despair = suffering-meaning and it’s the best way to describe my inability to accept what happened to me and its results, however I injured my brain but this didn't injure me as a person and this knowledge has been fueling all my interests that have given me the opportunity to research and study of subjects that I never would have thought to be important.
I’ve learned that meaning can be found in every human condition, including sufferance and desperation and we as humans are able to even give positive meaning to what seems to be very negative superficially.
Learning about these subjects and talking with a friend who’s a real expert and I'm reading what Viktor Frankl wrote about this are giving me the desire to reinvent myself as a human subject even if I’m broken.
I want to do this primarily to be remembered by those who love me for many years in the future, which to me means to become somewhat immortal, my children are now too young to be exposed to what I’m learning these days but since they both are smart and sensitive in few years they’ll know from me about what I’m studying which even it’s been discussed by philosophers for hundreds of years will give them an edge in all they will choose to do.

2009-11-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

REINAISSANCE

The beginning of this millennium is very similar to how the first one started with senseless wars in which too many people who were driven by ideals found death in very foreign countries fighting people who have beliefs and history not even comparable to ours.
These wars are named crusades that were followed by the human need to improve the living conditions and generated a rebirth in arts and sciences so impressive that still today, about 600 years later we enjoy their products.
There is a general, but not unchallenged, consensus that the Renaissance began in Florence, Tuscany in the 14th century. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time; its political structure; the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici; and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
Science and art were very much intermingled in the early Renaissance, with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature. An exhaustive 2007 study by Fritj of Capra shows that Leonardo was a much greater scientist than previously thought, and not just an inventor. In science theory and in conducting actual science practice, Leonardo was innovative. He set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and aerodynamics; he devised principles of research method that for Capra classify him as “father of modern science”. In Capra's detailed assessment of many surviving manuscripts Leonardo's science is more in tune with holistic non-mechanistic and non-reductive approaches to science which are becoming popular today. Perhaps the most significant development of the era was not a specific discovery, but rather a process for discovery, the scientific method. This revolutionary new way of learning about the world focused on empirical evidence, the importance of mathematics, and discarding the Aristotelian "final cause" in favor of a mechanical philosophy. Early and influential proponents of these ideas included Copernicus and Galileo. In his 1991 survey of these developments, Charles Van Doren considers that the Copernican revolution really is the Galilean cartesian (René Descartes) revolution, on account of the nature of the courage and depth of change their work brought about.

2009-10-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

DANTE SEES GOD

The importance of Dante Alighieri goes beyond the literature and his ability to reunite all the dialects and various languages that were spoken across Italy in the XIV century under the current Italian language. His divine comedy suggested to the Catholics the structure and organization of what happens after our death and in the very last “canto” of the Paradise he described that God is ourselves which to me is beyond literary genius. I can’t believe that someone who lived 700 years ago could write something like this:

And for what I saw
My words are not enough to call them meager.

O everlasting Light, you dwell alone
In yourself, know yourself alone, and known
And knowing, love and smile upon yourself!

That middle circle which appeared in you
To be conceived as a reflected light,
After my eyes had studied it a while,

Within itself and in its coloring
Seemed to be painted with our human likeness
So that my eyes were wholly focused on it.

As the geometer who sets himself
To square the circle and who cannot find,
For all his thought, the principle he needs,

Just so was I on seeing this new vision
I wanted to see how our image fuses
Into the circle and finds its place in it,

Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight —
Except that then my mind was struck by lightning
Through which my longing was at last fulfilled.

Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,

By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Dante’s description of God having “our human likeness” has not had the impact that the rest of his comedy has been having for hundreds of years and this makes me believe that human kind prefers to believe that something superior and not human can control our lives because it’s much easier hoping in this to solve our problems rather than working very hard to figure out what to do about them by ourselves.
The existence of a God and having a soul are themes that have generated some of the best thoughts and pieces of literature since the invention of print and thinkers like Leibnitz and Averroè have produced parts of literature that still today in this second millennium are magnificent, I like very much their distinction between soul and intellect where the first is mortal unlike the second one. There exist very much to read and learn on the subjects that I just mentioned but only having an open intellect and mind is worth going further than what I’m writing here.

2009-10-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

MY OWN GENETICS

I just watched for the second time in few days the movie with Benigni titled "life is wonderful" so I had plenty time to think about what I was seeing since I already knew what was going to happen and here's what I realized.
Sixty years ago the Germans under Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews to get rid of them from the earth so many in that period got involved and saw the brutality/perversity of what was being done to people that had nothing different than a last name or descendants that were Jew.
My grandfather was an engineer like my dad is and was in the Fascist army as a colonel sent between Rome and Napoli to reclaim the huge swamps that had been there for many centuries.
After he had done this he was sent to a Greek island to oversee a small battalion of soldiers who were in charge of protecting the population from German attacks, this was when he was captured by the German army and sent by train to Auschwitz where he stayed few months enough to see several thousands of Jews burnt alive or "gasified" in showers where they were told that could wash themselves.
My grandfather Umberto (his name) somehow escaped and returned to Brescia - 900 miles away with the alps in-between - by walking and when he knocked at the door of his home in Brescia his wife - Carolina - didn't recognize him and thought he was a beggar, he was 190 pounds at the beginning of the war and by the time he knocked on the door he was barely 110 pounds, he had suffered multiple strokes (heart attacks) and lived little longer, my father can't remember very much about his own father and once told me that he prefers this because his memories are all happy and good, he says that if he could remember more he probably would have painful and sad memories, when Umberto died my dad had just turned 20 and was living in Milan with his brother Dino to attend the university there.
My own complete inability and refusal to accept how disabled I've gotten is then something part of my genes, it's in my heart and blood in other words and nothing can possibly change this, Umberto walked through wonderful areas of northern Italy and I bet he went through Como and its lake and I'm sure that having a very weak heart he could have stayed in many of the places he walked through but he didn't, something was more important for him to accomplish no matter the pain in his chest and how tired he was.
I can say the same about another Lingiardi ancestor, I don't know the name, just that he lived in Pavia and had an organ making company, the Lingiardi organs were in most of the churches of a specific bandwidth of the north of Italy and were renowned for having the "human voice" and my ancestor was sure that it was him giving this "voice" to his organs because he was the one tuning the organ canes by blowing in them with his own lungs but by putting lead in his mouth he developed mouth cancer that became such a bad metastathasis that while tuning the canes he was bleeding.
Even when the doctors at his time told him to stop to tune canes because even if they didn't know of cancer it was obvious that the injury was provoked by tuning the organ canes he never stopped until he died because in his mind he was doing the most important thing to make his organs appreciated by both players and listeners. Once again one of my ancestors didn't accept his disability developed doing his own job and kept on going till death.
All of these stories and examples of ancestors in my family illustrate medically, genetically and scientifically my inability to accept the way I am now and are my reasons to ask forgiveness and support in my long battle against my conditions now that I know for sure that I can return to be a normal man.

2009-09-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

ARISTOTLE ON ETHICS

Aristotle asserted that man had three natures: vegetable (physical), animal (emotional) and rational (mental). Physical nature can be assuaged through exercise and care, emotional nature through indulgence of instinct and urges, and mental through human reason and developed potential. Rational development was considered the most important, as essential to philosophical self-awareness and as uniquely human. Moderation was encouraged, with the extremes seen as degraded and immoral. For example, courage is the moderate virtue between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness. Man should not simply live, but live well with conduct governed by moderate virtue. This is regarded as difficult, as virtue denotes doing the right thing, to the right person, at the right time, to the proper extent, in the correct fashion, for the right reason.

Sexual relationships between doctors and patients can create ethical conflicts, since sexual consent may conflict with fiduciary responsibility of the physician. In the early 1990s it was estimated that 2 to 9% of doctors had violated the rule of sexual relationships between physicians and patients and patients relatives, which may also be prohibited in some jurisdictions, although this prohibition is highly controversial.

2009-09-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

IACOPO VETTORI

Iacopo and I have become friends thanks to Dante Alighieri, our passion and understanding of Dante’s work and the metaphysic concepts that are involved to explain narrations in Dante’s Comedy.
The way I encountered Iacopo is through his Italian reading of the Divine Comedy http://www.iacopovettori.it/recitazione/commedia/Default.aspx
Which has arrived at the Paradise Canto VIII. Iacopo has written about the three hypotheses about what we should expect to find at the end of our lives, his intelligent reasoning can be read if you follow this link http://www.iacopovettori.it/laterzaipotesi/eng/The_three_hypotheses.aspx
When I first read it I had many questions to ask Iacopo because I was raised Catholic and I now believe that what Pascal said about believing in God is logic and safe to do.
Iacopo is an atheist even if he has been studying for years the work of Dante who wrote the report of the travel in the outer world which he organized like Christians believe is like and added details that were part of legends of peasants of his time.
Through our email discussions I’ve grown and matured very much, therefore many questions, fears and doubts about my accident and future are now completely resolved.

2009-08-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

THE ACTUAL SPECT scans OF MY BRAIN

Earlier I received the CD with the SPECT scan that I’ve done at dr. Uszler office and I put here the two that are easiest to understand for me even if the one where my brain is all gray was done in an hospital near where I live months before the one in color, they show the extent and position of the injury while the colors identify where my brain is over - under reactive or dead, for someone who understand how to look at these kinds of scans the size and gravity of my injury are very evident and this doctor made me understand that brain plasticity and oxygen therapy can work together to take over what’s dead. My biggest learning of talking with the doctor is that if I could have done this test many months ago it would have been clear that doing 40 sessions of HBOT is just the beginning of what also dr. Harch called “long journey” without ever having even seen me in person.
So now the focus is on doing more HBOT breathing pure oxygen at 1.5ATA which is what I haven’t been able to do in months.
Dr. Uszler suggested the use of even higher pressures, he mentioned 1.7, 1.8 but having learned from when I did ten sessions at 1.75 that my sight suffered in width, I prefer to stay within the standard 1.5.
One of the red parts of my brain says that my anxiety is very high and I commented to the doctor that it’s due to my divorce and complete lack of support from my wife. He told me that he had to live through this same experience so he knows why I say that.

2009-06-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

GOOD VIBE

The day that the portable chamber that I’m buying will arrive to me is the day of my mother birthday, she is going to be 75 and by phone she still sounds like she is 20 years less.
I consider this overlap a sign of good luck which is always needed no matter what, I’m buying a portable chamber only because my parents gifted the money necessary to do it even if they both have been living with my dad’s retirement for almost 20 years, they trust that when I say that I’ve studied something and I’m sure of it I’m right and since I’ve always been right before they have no reason to doubt me now that what’s at stake is my future life. I’ve always had a very good relationship and closeness with them and for them to share their very limited resources with their son who has always been right in his beliefs should teach a good lesson to the other people who tell me they love me but do nothing to help me nor share a dime.

2009-04-11T10:54:00.001-07:00

MY ITALIAN SIDE OF FAMILY

My sister Anna is here to be with me over Easter with her husband Luca and being my family of origin from Italy they are concerned about what has been going on around me and they are going to do everything possible to ensure that going forward I can have something good.
My biggest disappointment is that since Anna is a biologist who worked in hospitals with many important doctors doesn’t believe that HBOT can do anything for me so I must stay away from this subject when I talk with her.
She’s the one who supported my wife Michele not to “waste” money to let me do all the HBOT sessions that I need to have my body heal the injury in my brain.
I remember making Anna upset once when I said that I’m alone, I meant that I’m alone in my fight to recover from the brain injury I have but she understood that I meant that nobody was caring and doing anything for me so now I must be careful in what I say.
In my fight to have more HBOT I’m however still in the middle of the desert of ignorance that has been surrounding the whole world for centuries.
Now we have the new president who has seen that something exists outside of this desert so I’m sure that in few years we’ll all be in the beautiful forest of knowledge.
I want to be able to walk before that time however, I’ve always been first in everything so I want this to continue.
I hope to have very good news about the additional therapy in not too long.

2009-03-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

MY MATURING CHILDREN

Brent and Giorgia come to spend few hours with me here each Sunday and they mean a world to me, I can’t say what they represent because I’d make a too long list so I’m only going to say that for such young people they had to experience something close to the loss of the father for death and since I’m alive my focus is on ensuring a life with no other shocks or drama.
Every time they are with me I ask them what school is teaching them and especially if they say something that means that their newest matter is difficult to understand and master I try to make it look from the point of view of someone who wants to understand the matter very well because of curiosity which is part of intelligence and my children are very intelligent for sure.
So I start asking them questions that sound curious but really uncover the deepest meaning of what they are learning and by doing this I make them process what they are learning in a different way, to teach something to someone else requires a very deep understanding and mastering of the matter and my questioning isn’t a teacher who wants to evaluate them, it’s a loving father who is trying to understand something new to him.
Doing this is to teach something in a very relaxed and joyful manner, my son Brent is very good in math so I have an ongoing challenge with him to find one math operation that I can’t do. Both him and I enjoy very much this challenge and I found a way to talk to him also about European history and business which makes talking to him about elementary level math very interesting for me too. The picture here was taken in Santa Barbara before I had the accident that resulted in partial death and brain injury, now I’m well alive and the brain injury is being taken care by the oxygen therapy that even if it isn’t medically accepted as the cure for it very soon it will.

2009-02-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

MY LOVE FOR MUSIC

The music that J.S. Bach composed has been always very dear to me http://www.goshen.edu/news/pressarchive/04-20-05-bach-temper.html when I discovered the genius of the pianist Glenn Gould who played it in a way unparalleled still to this day by any pianist in the entire world a special kind of love started for me. He was able to turn performance into composition.
I bought everything he ever recorded on CD and I have every movie ever made about this pianist on DVD which I watch often and it relaxes me very much while it reminds me of my own piano playing.
I’ve read plenty about this composer so I know very much about his life and his composing, I too have learned very much about the pianist Gould whose recordings have been best sellers almost fifty years after they were made.
Just like his most famous recording which is the Goldberg Variations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7LWANJFHEs&feature=related begins and ends with the same piece of music Gould became very well known when at the beginning of his recording career with the Variations that happen to be the very last recording he made shortly before dieing.
He died when he was fifty years old when he passed away and he could still influence the world of music and not for twenty more years.

2009-02-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

DANTE ALIGHIERI: THE DIVINE COMEDY

Dante is primarily important because he wrote the Comedy in his dialect of Tuscany which given the popularity that his Comedy had at the time became the Italian language still spoken today.
The subject of the Comedy wasn’t his mental elaboration; it was just the collection of stories used by normal people when trying to explain what may happen to our soul after death.
This is why his Comedy has been always a “best seller”. The narration of a real man about a travel made to the outer world, or the world of the dead, in which many well known people are met, is very credible and acceptable.
Dante gave a structure to the outer world very acceptable and even intuitive to the point that it became the way the Catholic religion structured its own explanation of question of mankind.
Whoever reads it today in the second millennium reacts exactly like who read it seven hundred years ago, surprise, curiosity and fascination.
Dante explores the outer world in company of Virgilio who was who wrote the bucolic poems about country and simple living.
Together the walk through the Hell where the souls of the people who in life did the unjust and cruel will be forever, each type of what’s called sin is punished with a different penalty and in a different part of this world.
After Hell they go up to Purgatory which is where the souls can be cleaned of the sins that aren’t called mortal but venial sins so they must be purified in different ways and times.
The end of this trip is dedicated to Paradise or heaven where the souls can feel the closeness to God and enjoy absolute freedom that extends to influence earthly matters.
The large number of famous people nominated and met in person by Dante along his trip is omni comprehensive of all the people of notice for the time when it was written so not only it teaches things by examples using well known lives but it does this using a very logical way.
I believe that this is the reason why the Divine Comedy became soon a very popular book to read and study and it still is seven hundred years after having been written.

2009-01-10T20:57:00.000-08:00

HISTORY EXPLAINS

If we look at how life was at the beginning of the first millennium we can better understand the challenge that we are having now with the economic crisis worldwide and have a better understanding of how long it may take the modern world to have its renaissance, so I’m going to give a little history lesson.
For several hundred years, from about the first to around the fifth century AD, Rome was the greatest power on Earth, ruling Britain and the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. However, in northern Europe, there were fierce tribes that were only held at bay by the Romans. Around 400 AD, the Roman Empire began to weaken and the northern tribes swept across the continent of Europe and plundered the city of Rome. The Roman Empire collapsed and was gradually replaced by many small kingdoms ruled by a strong warrior.
For many years, Europe was without the luxuries and riches that had marked the height of Rome. Many centuries later, a new interest in learning would mark the beginning of the Renaissance. The thousand years between is called the Middle Ages or the Medieval period. This period began and ended for different countries at different times across Europe.
The northern tribes did not stamp out learning completely, only momentarily set it back. The Catholic Church was already a powerful institution at the end of the Roman Empire and it continued to be the unifying force between the many small kingdoms that would become Europe. The Church salvaged much from the ruins of the ancient world and became one of the centers of learning during the Middle Ages. The people of the Middle Ages had a rich culture and produced many advances in art, literature, science, and medicine and paved the way for the ideas that would become the beginning of the Renaissance.
To begin your journey into the Middle Ages, try to picture a world with far fewer people, where no one moved away from their hometown, and life moved at a slower pace. There was no electricity, no water from faucets, no television, and no cars. Imagine such a world to begin your journey into a land that was filled with real knights, castles, lords, and ladies.