Carmen slept in the bed last night, head nestled against my ribs. That’s okay, I wanted to tell her. I missed her last night, too, even though she maintained contact with my legs or feet the entire night. But the concept of her being in a separate bed–no matter that it was connected to mine–well, it reminded me she’s not always going to be around to sing moo songs at bedtime.

She is sleeping right now with a book about native plants. She’s lost interest in her remote control, and is only moderately interested in her telephone. She has little to no interest in her dolls. But my books, she is happy to sleep with. In the past week she’s slept with a book on brain injuries, a Frontier Wholesale co-op catalog, and now the native plants book, a few hundred pages thick. Carmen flipped through it, but prefered to snuggle with it. The other books, being few pages, she preferred to sleep on directly.

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I’ve slept with a book before, but normally because I was reading it.

I recently found out that we need to add Larry Dierker to the list of people who have dealt with an AVM. His was discovered after he had a seizure in the dugout. I have good company with this AVM adventure.

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I’ve replayed in my mind, over and over, what I remember of my days in the ICU. I especially have tried to remember waking up after the surgery; the lights, suturing the incision from the shunt, removing the intubation. The memory is foggy, like half a dream, and I’m not sure how much to trust it.

I am certain that when I opened my eyes, I heard the resident, my former classmate and now my doctor, talking softly and cheerfully. I felt the hard plastic endotracheal tube in my mouth. Somebody started talking again, and I was aware of Matt in the room. I think he was saying something. I looked down and could see the tube rise out of my mouth. Somewhere, sometime I felt like I had to say something to Matt. With clumsy fingers, I spelled out “SHUT UP.”

“Shut up”?

For a little while I wasn’t sure if I really said that. But the other day, Matt ensured me that my memory was accurate.

Some romantic I am.

I think I was trying to say something like, “I’m sorry, I have this plastic bit down my throat and I’ve a bit of a headache, but hey, I’m fine, thanks, I’ll talk to you in a bit.” But grasping for words, floating in an anesthesia fog, and on the verge of gagging, “shut up” was all I could manage.

I don’t think movies have scenes like that.

I feel a little bad about it. Matt says it doesn’t bother him that I didn’t say something kinder or more loving or sentimentally inspired. That’s probably the right thing to do. In fact, I think I remember he laughed at it. Still, I feel a little bit bad.

Carmen is sleeping in her own bed tonight.

It’s connected to mine, and she is only in her bed because I had to lie there with her while she played with my ankles (and sang something that involved loud mooing). After I knew she was asleep, I slowly slid out of her grip. And now I’m sitting here, and she’s sleeping there.

The idea is that she’ll like sleeping there.

And then in the end, C&D will wind up sleeping in the same room.

But it’s like a geometry proof. I know what I want to show, I just don’t know the steps, rules, theorems, and woo-woo-hand-waving that I need to use to get from here to there.

If the experiment fails for the moment (after all, will David ever be able to sleep next to a sibling prone to singing about potties, shrimp, sheep, or mooing cows for several minutes before drifting off, herself?), I’ve at least bought myself some space. Carmen is fully capable of occupying a king-size bed and leaving me a sliver, upside-down and sideways. With the twin-size bed attached, I might have more than a sliver to sleep on.

I’ve not been spending so much time in front of the computer, partly because I’ve found other things to do (exercising, cooking, chores) and partly because Carmen wakes up during naptimes and nighttimes by my typing. When she sees the glow of the screen she immediately asks to look at “pitchurs” and click the wireless mouse. I could get her a toy laptop, but do you think she would settle for a cheap imitation?

I think not.

The week, in summary:

I drove last week, then I didn’t. I have some appointments, but no more driving, really, for a little while longer. To tell you the truth, I found driving exhausting. A drive to Kirby (maybe a mile?) made my head hurt between my ears, and made me feel uneasy on my feet. But by Thursday I felt comfortable enough that after a nap I actually took 59 to Weslayan (to avoid two stoplights), played with C&D at the park for an hour, and drove them home. Vivian helped so I wasn’t alone, but I still felt super-powered. Then Friday I found out I maybe shouldn’t have. So deflating. But, at the same time, since driving made me so tired, I’m not so terribly sad. It really is maybe too early.

I still have times when I just don’t speak the way I want to. Sometimes I can spell the word, or even show you the ASL sign for it, but I can’t say it, or I say it and don’t know if I’m saying it correctly. Sometimes I can throw in a synonym and come up with the correct word later. Those problems are increasingly rare, but when I’m tired, though, all bets are off, and I make no sense. That needs to GO AWAY. I’ve got too much I need to say, don’t you think? And I’m not accustomed to having problems communicating. The other day I tried to leave a message and the same thing happened. On voicemail. E-mail, at least, I can edit. And edit. And edit.

My Target revulsion has pretty much gone away. Walking through a store doesn’t make me want to throw up, anymore, but the River Oaks Whole Foods still does (too many people!). I need food more than I need Target, unfortunately.

Bittersweet isn’t the right word for it. Maybe better the word is something like “sweet and sour.” Last night Carmen couldn’t go to sleep because she was too busy singing the potty song as she rolled around in bed. If you don’t know the potty song, you’re missing out. it’s a sweet song for a small child to sing, especially if she is rolling around in the dark, playing with your feet as she sings.

The sour part, of course, is that she should be sleeping.

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Maybe bittersweet is the idea that the last day to nurse was some random day in January, a day none of us thought would be our last. I miss especially holding David while he fell asleep in my arms, his body curling around mine, comfortable and safe. I miss our secret afternoon ritual, even though the ritual sometimes became a long chore and I yearned to be rid of it. In either case, it was ours and now it’s gone.

Dr. Chen’s nifty nurse Melanie called this afternoon.

She said the EEG showed seizure activity. Oh. [edit 5 April: I must have misheard this. It didn't show epileptic activity, but the left temporal lobe showed some slownesss. However, given that my AVM was in a region of the brain involved in so much activity, the prudent thing wasn't to drive until we were sure things were okay. My follow-up with Dr. Lopez later in the month suggested I could drive but be cautious, and that's what I've been doing. Fortunately, living in town, most everything I need is a stone throw's away.)

Since Dr. Lopez had given me the green light to drive this past week, I assumed the EEG showed that my brain had been acting pretty mellow. I guess it hadn't.

Darn, anyway.

I drove to the family practice clinic on Wednesday, and on Thursday even drove C&D to our favorite park.

I guess I'll stick to little streets, close by, and sans babies.

At the end of the month I visit Dr. Lopez, who maybe isn't as conservative as Dr. Chen. He'll order another EEG, and we'll see what it says. I wasn't able to get details from Melanie about the EEG, but maybe with Dr. Lopez I'll get the nitty-gritty. [edit 5 April: the EEG report was all of three lines long. We might do another EEG, but later, after the angio.]

Do you know what’s bad about right now? Too tired to do too much, but not too tired to think, I have time–just enough–to think about things I shouldn’t really think about.

For instance, lately I’ve been thinking about rads. You know, not like “cool, rad,” but I mean rads, radiation , the stuff you’re supposed to avoid. It occurred to me one day that with the x-rays, CT scans, and angios, my head has received a measurable dose of radiation.

But wait, let’s stop right here. After all, a few rads is better is better than an AVM. If we hadn’t caught the AVM . . .

Well, I won’t go there, either. That’s worse.

Maybe it’s time for a mid-morning snack, even though I just ate breakfast. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts . . .

I keep thinking of the fuss David made over the pots and pans we brought home from Ikea.  He was so happy and impressed with them.  “David wit pan!” he told us, smiling and holding the pot out.  “David wit spoon!  David wit lid!”  Will he always be proud of those things that are simplest?