I woke up Monday morning with a *very* swollen left eye. My thought was that there was something wrong with my left eye - either the shingles or the surgery on that side of that hemisphere of my brain.
I panicked.
Neither was a 'good' situation, but I could not get through to my family doctor, or my eye doctor. A friend recommended I call the optometrist, and fortunately she was able to see me.
I explained the brain bleed and my concern about the surgery or the shingles. They did pressure tests, took photos, and when all the tests had been done...there was nothing to blame for either thing. I had gotten a doctor's office visit with the locum with my doctor on Wednesday and he read her report and pronounced himself as perplexed as she was, what was wrong.
But it was 3 days of worrying about what was going wrong. On the safe side, he wrote me an eye ointment Rx just in case there was something 'wrong' that neither of them had thought about. (The swelling is gradually reducing, but still no answer as to why.)
There is nothing quite like a body that appears to about collapse.
I have had to spend a great deal of time, thinking about what to do now.
I had a physiotherapist's assessment, and he will come back next Tuesday to give me feedback about how to proceed to continue to weave. I have massage bookings to help with the mild whiplash injury. I will be picking up other therapists as the time goes ahead. Hopefully speech therapy will be scheduled - it is the 'worst' thing happening. (IMHO)
I have a contract to write an article for a magazine, and now I need to decide if it is possible. The article for the summer is still a possibility - but I will need to redo what I had planned.
But I have had medical professionals tell me I am doing 'well' (while I bite my tongue explaining it doesn't *feel* as though I am). Teaching in person (by Zoom) seems like a step too far. I have a couple people ready to help me do alpha reading - and whom I trust to tell me I'm not making a fool out of myself.
But at the 6 week and 1 day after the surgery, I now have to prepare myself to proceed - at some level.
Why?
Because I'm not dead yet.
When my younger brother died in February 2008, I had to think long and hard how to continue. In the end, I decided he was dead, and I was not. If I were to honour his memory, then I was going to live well for both of us.
And here I am. I've experienced a brain bleed. I'm 74 years old. If I am going to continue to honour Don's memory, I need to pick up what I do 'next', and do what I can do.
So.
Forward.
Where the road leads from here on, I have zero idea. If the weaving magazine wants me to keep reading, I guess I keep writing. If not, there is this blog.
3 comments:
For what it's worth, it seems like the fluidity of your written language has drastically improved since you started writing about this brain bleed. Of course I have no idea how difficult it is for you to do, or how it compares to your speech. But the improvement is clear even from just reading your blog--fewer grammatical errors, fewer wrong-but-conceptually-similar words, etc.
I hope that's not out of line for me, a stranger, to comment on. I just hope you can remain optimistic about being able to do things that bring you joy and meaning.
I am having to work a lot harder to make sure my comments are 'sensible'. Part of part of the challenge with words is finding the correct words, and making sure they make sense. In the past I might spend 20 or 30 minutes at most to write a fairly lengthy post. Now I need to read/re-read what I've read over and over and again. Since the blog was meant to be me, thinking about this and that, I'm now having to spend a lot more time making sure I am making 'sense' so that readers are (hopefully) reading what I am trying very hard to say... (in re-reading 5 t0 7 times in just this very short message)
💗 thinking of you
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