You know what’s frustrating? Being on the cusp of normalcy, or something that resembles normalcy, but not. C&D remind me daily of my limitations, even when no one else. And especially when I’ve forgotten. Whether I’m too tired to roughhouse or can’t remember a song that I knew by heart a month ago, they remind me. But finitude is not a concept I’ve studied in any depth. Who, me? Little lessons, everywhere.

Along with reminders of how good I have it. All of it. All of it.

You know, I think people with newfound limitations, temporary or otherwise, have a visceral need to find opportunities to create and express, despite, or maybe around, those new limitations. This past month I needed more than ever to share ideas, design plans of every kind, answer the questions that keep me awake at night, and find the sounds that haunt me with earaches and headaches when the house is quiet and I want to remember music I’ve loved. I’ve never felt so restlessly creative, or curious, clumsily communicative or mindful. So on Valentine’s Day, when other gals were getting sparklies or chocolates or pretty little boxes full of nothing useful wrapped with red and pink, Matt plopped a brown HP laptop box on my bed, and matter-of-factly asked me to cut the UPC symbol out from the box so he could mail out for the rebate. Romantic. [Seriously!]

Know what else? It took me a month, but I finally remembered the guy who made Far Side cartoons: Gary Larsen, right? When I was in school and I think even in college I had pasted on my binder a Far Side cartoon cut from a page-a-day calendar. The cartoon was of a group of doctors standing around a patient on the operation table, the brain exposed with the surgeon sticking his finger on the patient’s brain and saying, “Hey, guys, look at this!” while the patient’s leg kicks off the table. I thought it was rich, adolescently funny and looking at it always made me smile.

I think it’s funnier, though now in maybe a more acerbic way, that over a decade later I lay on an operating table, my brain exposed.

You know what was on the other side of the binder? A TIME magazine cover of Freud with his head bowed, the top of his head broken and scattered puzzle pieces.

Edit in brackets added 7 March 2007.

[Comment added 5 October, 2007:  I don't recommend trying to blog on a PDA in bed four weeks after brain surgery.  It's too hard.  And writing with diplomatic touch doesn't necessarily come naturally, either.  It was hard for people to read the following and not get offended.  Don't be.  I felt as good roadkill, and those who were offended maybe didn't, and won't ever, understand the situation.   That's okay, though maybe unfortunate.  Meanwhile, maybe consider this: I like a little noise, a little chitchat, a little music.  But in the point in space and time of this entry, and still to some degree today, even the simple footsteps of some of the people I love most sound like a herd of . . . ungulates!]

To celebrate [the post-op anniversary], I guess Matt brought home from work last week a cold for all of us to catch. The worst of it was Monday and today, although Saturday was the worst of the nights. So generous. I wonder what he brings us tomorrow for Valentine’s Day? Maybe I suggest he keeps it, whatever it is.

Unless it’s sparkly or edible. Or both.

When a Little Extra Deprivation

So, anyway, he was home yesterday, and I was extra-convalescing and catching up on sleep. Or trying, anyway. To ensure that I rest my head, my casement windows arrived from Iowa weeks early. After hours of head-pounding hammering, thumping, and sawing I would be rewarded
with new, operational, rot-free windows. It was worth a little extra sleep deprivation. (The family cold disease event was, in contrast, not so much.)

Our contractor knocked out the framing and installed the windows last Sunday and Monday, and then hammered in the interior and exterior trimming Sunday. During some of the loudest of the work I napped and lounged in two local hotels, where I finally slept the best post-op.

For the most part, though, the noise from the remodeling was actually less than the sounds of buffalo stampeding that Matt and the babes usually provide for me from upstairs. Actually, C&D are relatively quiet little buffalo, and the sound of their galloping across the ceiling makes me laugh. Matt is the one who sometimes strikes the floor hard with his heels and makes my ears hurt. He is careful, however. [Because it's not intentional stampeding noises, of course.]

How Recuperating Is Feline

So like Toby, our aging cat, I sleep when I can, and when I can’t sleep (usual, as a patched-up hole in your skull isn’t conducive to sleep, nor the restless knowledge that you would like to do something and can’t because you are too tired or too homebound or too dizzy or too overwhelmed by Cutest Babies in the World which, despite their cuteness do not have a properly functioning volume knob, and of course don’t forget the stampeding buffalo upstairs) I sit in bed or my favorite recliner and rest, wondering at daytime television (what is
the point of Regis Philbin?) or watching a DVD and then, like Toby again, I am sometimes only paying half attention, waiting for something to happen exciting, or more likely, for naptime to happen again.

Between naps I cook our meals or putter around the house, chit-chatting with the babes or Vivian, the angel who temporarily does the baby-wrangling on weekdays while Matt works. When I feel strong I straighten up, finish projects I started pre-op or make more to-do
lists on the bathroom mirror, junk mail, in tablets. When visitors come I talk until I’m dizzy, flinging my hands around and remembering words I thought I’d forgotten. Then after my little burst of activity, I withdraw to my quiet little bedroom again.

TBI

My brain is, well, on the brain. When I clapped with C&D to Humpty Dumpty’s fall off the wall, my first thought was “Traumatic Brain Injury.”

Couldn’t they find him a good neurosurgeon?

My other thought was that I remembered [the words to] Humpty Dumpty.

My ears are bothering. They have been for a while, already. Means my
head wants a rest. Night.

Written 14 Feb, edits in brackets added 7 March for clarity.

One-month post-op anniversary today.

No official celebrating; not even sure Matt noticed. He’s too busy rushing from work to home and home to work.

Neighbor brought me rolls and a pot of happy tulips yesterday. I love everything about tulips. They reach up, tender and asking for a kiss.

Did I tell you trying to use this PDA in lieu of a real computer is slow and painful? Yeah, I know; I already said that last time. I just needed to say it again, because it is.

Decided writing on paper sucks for my purposes. It doesn’t e-mail back. And it doesn’t have Google.

And it’s messy. My dresser drawers are filling up with loose papers, very mad scientist. Da Vinci would have been happier with a laptop, I’m sure. No need for stacks and stacks of journals. And he wouldn’t have had to have written everything backwards; he could have just pressed “encrypt.”

[That was a joke, did you miss it? Maybe brain surgery makes my humor even drier than usual? Anyway, Da Vinci: Some people have suggested he wrote in mirror script as way to protect his ideas from the very nosey Catholic Church. Others remind us Da Vinci was left-handed, and probably wrote right-to-left to prevent his hand from smearing the ink on the page. I like the encryption story better, regardless of its veracity.]

Almost a month since the surgery, can I celebrate?

I want to write, because for once I have time and can, and because I have thoughts I want to write down and remember.

That’s the tricky bit, though. Sitting at the computer brings on an aurora borealis with cosmic vibes and universal proportions–in my head. My ears hum and buzz, static crawls just beneath my scalp, and I feel like someone is using a whisk to beat my brain into stiff, swirled peaks.

It might be the upstairs noise, the light, or maybe my mind responding to the overwhelmingly large monitor.

In any case, I’m trying to graffiti-peck my e-communications on a PDA. In the sage language of Homer (Simpson), “Doh!”

Might be another month. Until then I have paper, I guess.

Some days I feel so slow. But then I remember:
• when I didn’t no the word for sandwich (“Mom, can I have, um, you know, some bread with peanut butter inside?”)
• not knowing if I could pronounce “refrigerator”
• saying “2005″ for when I thought I was saying 2007 in response to the ICU nurses’ questions
• realizing in the ER that I couldn’t sing right, and then wondering in the ICU, days after surgery with my head feeling swollen and full of fluf, if I was going to be deaftone [sic] forever

Singing at this point still not so great, but in time for me to forget songs that babes can now sing themselves — David can sing whole songs now (!) and Carmen sang “Twinkle Twinkle” before bed today. I was happy to be able to hear it.

List made 2 February, edits in brackets and elsewhere added 8 March 2007.

But still impressive.

That’s the phrase Dr. Chen asked me to say every day when I stayed in the hospital. When I finally didn’t slur my words together, or blink and ask “it’s a what?” he knew I would be okay. So he sent me home, Wednesday, five days after he removed the AVM, six days after I walked into the ER nauseous, with a headache, dizzy, and admitting I wasn’t speaking quite right.

So Wednesday morning I sat up as straight as I could, steadying my slow sway, and waited for my discharge papers. I couldn’t see clearly from the hemorrhage and the subsequent swelling. I walked with a drunken wobble. I experienced auditory processing problems and sometimes couldn’t understand a lick of whatever any of the doctors told me (one of many reasons why, when someone you like is in the hospital, they shouldn’t be left alone). And sometimes I couldn’t understand what I myself said. For a while I told the ICU nurses that the year was 2005–even though my brain was certain I was saying 2007. Other times I knew I could spell a word, but had to admit I couldn’t remember how to pronounce it.

Monday I couldn’t remember Dr. Chen’s name (calling him Dr. McDreamy didn’t count). In fact, I couldn’t even pronounce it, and when Matt tried to spell the name for me, I told him I wasn’t sure I knew what a “C” was. It was familiar, but what was it?

But after Monday my brain started to settle down again. And oh, I couldn’t wait to go home. I missed C&D. I also missed sleeping. The good thing about being discharged from the hospital early isn’t just that the rooms are boring and the food is too salty. During my six-day stay, I think I only really slept for more than an hour a stretch (being under anesthesia doesn’t count). I didn’t find much comfort in the hard bed, worried about the patients involved in the code-blue announcements over the PA system, and found too often my sleep interrupted so someone could check my IV bag or give me round-the-clock drugs.

Once home I didn’t sleep much then, either. But at least I was home.

Started 1 Feb 2007, edited drastically 7 March 2007 (in an effort to make more sense).