Painting pumpkins on the balcony. When Matt brought out the camera, Carmen said “Smile, pumpkin!”

Matt after being accosted by two toddlers and a package of stickers:

Scissors and glue:

MRI with contrast this week, to make sure we could spot the remaining bit of the AVM.

Something about the operating machine made my right bottom molars hurt. This happened during the MRI the night before my surgery, too. That time, at the hospital, I think the tech and physicist thought I was a little strange. As it was nearly midnight, I’m sure many of their patients seem delusional by that time of night. This time my technicians believed that something really did hurt, and suggested I go to my dentist for him to give that tooth a look-see. I don’t like the MRI machine much, even if the pictures are pretty.

We had to wait to scan until Dr. Chen, a floor up, could prove to them that the aneurysm clip in my brain was MRI-safe. (I didn’t realize anything had been left in there, even though the clip makes sense. I have a little card to carry around in my wallet now, stating that I have an MRI-safe titanium clip in my head.) While we were waiting for the clip card, I stood in the doorway of the machine operators’ room. I watched the technician review my previous scans, where the clip glowed bright white. And around the bright white was a region of . . . black. Not grey like the rest of my grey matter, but black as the night sky in West Texas.

After the scan we rode the elevator up a floor to visit Dr. Chen. On the computer screen we scrolled through the scans that we had just taken downstairs. Standing behind the doctor, I saw the black hole again. The MRI showed it even larger and darker. “There’s some atrophy,” he said as he circled the area with his mouse.

I tried not to laugh. “Atrophy” was a nice, medical way to say it. I have a little dead spot in my head. It’s not even that little. I am actually missing some brain.

Sometimes when I feel tired or confused and at a loss of words I tell Matt, “Give me a break, I have a hole in my head!” I didn’t know I would really have a hole like this.

I feel suddenly so much kinder to myself. I understand now–because I’ve actually seen it–that my deficits are real, that my brain must overcome real challenges to do what I request of it. The damage isn’t just about a few insulted neurons, it’s a whole community of neurons that have been cut and pruned back, deprived of oxygen and dead, and my brain is still learning to work around the injury–physically, cognitively.

Sometimes during this recovery process I have felt disappointed with myself, thinking I wasn’t recovering quickly enough. Sometimes I felt sad that I wasn’t meeting my doctors’ expectations. Sometimes I couldn’t understand why I felt so tired, or so confused, or so slow. Now I know.
Post completed December 2007, when I should be sleeping.

My mom has lately been keeping C&D busy with their glue, scissors, and paper. She’s been taking care of them while I’ve been going to TIRR and visiting various doctors’ offices. Last week she drew an ice cream cone, and Carmen colored in the cone. Next to it my mom drew a banana, and Carmen colored that in, too. Then Carmen drew the long strokes next to it banana. "That’s the peel," she explained.

Not sure what the green squiggle was that David made to the left of his "dirty" tree (to the left). Carmen pointed at it and said, "David made an octupus!" They haven’t taken oceanography yet.

My favorite: a lady and a man. Carmen proudly pointed out the lady was holding a feather. Both people featured a very important feature–belly buttons.

just misplaced. Carmen took it to the playground, and rain started to fell as they left.  Matt stashed the dolly in the basket of the stroller. Carmen was happy to find it.

This week I saw an ad for plastic pumpkins at Michael’s.  The ad said the pumpkins were $9.99, and for that price the buyer can decorate it at the store for free.

I don’t like this, and not just because it’s a sore deal.

What’s the point of a plastic pumpkin?  Because after I decorate it I’m going to save it for next year, and for the year after that?  Will I have an attic full of plastic pumpkins in a decade?  Or will I just throw them away after the sun and rain and cat and neighborhood children break it into pieces?  Unlike the field-grown kind, these plastic pumpkins won’t decompose in any near term.

Not like jack-o-lantern pumpkins are the greatest thing, ever.   Do we have the spare farmland to grow pumpkins that are going to be cut, poked at, and then tossed in the trash can in November?  I’m not sure, but they at least decompose after we appreciate them, signs of plenty, the season, the beauty, the whimsy.

Post completed Dec 2007, just in time for Christmas (maybe I should write about plastic Christmas trees next?).

Earlier this week my mom attached longer hair to Carmen’s dolly. Using her own hairbrush, Carmen cooed and babbled as she brushed the dolly’s strands.

I haven’t seen it in days. And Carmen is asking for it.

I searched the house, especially the very low and very high places that we might not have checked before. No dolly.

I searched outside. No dolly.

I searched the car. No dolly, although I did find a pair of pink shoes.

I think Matt took Carmen, David, and the dolly on a stroller ride to a playground earlier this week, and I’m afraid they came home with one less passenger.

I’m hoping they played at the park near the school, where maybe a teacher would have found the dolly, dusted it off, and taken it the school office.

I’m in a near-panic mode, ready to scour the neighborhood and put up fliers.

Carmen is a little curious, but not worried. She assumes it’ll turn up.
I think she isn’t worried because she’s never lost anything for very long. She’s never even lost a balloon to the sky. I think I remember every balloon and toy I ever lost. I remember the heartache.
I know I can’t, but I wish I could protect Carmen from that forever. I hope this isn’t a first.

Yesterday I had a MRI at the Baylor Clinic. After the scan I traveled up a floor to visit with Dr. Chen.

Dr. Chen pointed out the atrophied area injured by the bleed. The MRI term for the area, lacking myelin and nerve fibers, is called a black hole. I wanted to laugh and put my hands in the air. I felt pretty great for having a hole in my head.

The less cheerful news was that we could all see a glowing dot near the AVM that bled, indicating a small shunt remained. Matt and I spent the weekend reading up on Gamma Knife (GK) radiosurgery, so we were prepared with questions. Dr. Chen verified that there was a small risk of operating, but that the risk of operating would be less than the risk of another bleed. We discussed the radiosurgeon we would need to help us, and the logistics of when and how I would receive the procedure. He offered to give us time to think the problem over. I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s do it,” I said, and promised to talk to the radiosurgeon next week.

At home we made the appointment for Wednesday. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll have the GK procedure the first week of December.

But then I woke up at four in the morning (it’s now 7:26) realizing I had just happily agreed to letting someone fry my brain. Some of it is already gone; am I that flippant that I don’t mind the fry a little bit more? Is it really worth the risk? How will I ever know for sure? In half-dreams I thought of complications like cysts, more bleeds, swollen brains, tumors that wouldn’t have been there had I not fried my brain in the first place. I used to like math because of the certainty, but I’ve never liked statistics, which is all about accepting uncertainty. I don’t like playing the odds, I just like to know.