“There are only two seasons here. Winter…and Construction!”
Over the decades, I have chosen to modified my lifestyle to fit this available sentiment normally articulated in relation to either a challenge with the weather, a hurdle with construction, or both coming into play at the same time.
For my own internal structural purposes, I consider the winter months a great time for researching, practicing, planning and perhaps some hard-core cleaning efforts, with an occassional trip planned around bearable weather conditions. Then there is the yearning to do anything but sit inside my home, sometimes in a direction of music and sometimes just drifting along in my community, enjoying both the people and the scenery–let alone traveling a decent distance to accomplish something on my Adult Dreams and Desires List (e.g. pinball events, music, etc. )
I also know there are going to be literally thousands of decisions flying through my mind, regardless of the time of year. Some may be geared towards how I want to spend my next 5 minutes, let alone 5 hours, but even the first 5 seconds of a day can present a flurry of decisions to be made, many by automatic default.
For example, waking up from a night’s sleep might not immediately lead to heading for a bathroom. Am I really awake? Do I really have to get up right away if I am awake? Can I go back to sleep? Should I stretch first or curl up with the blankets one last time? Will I put something on my feet? Does anything hurt? How am I physically feeling? Headaches? Sore throat? Stuffed nose? Do I hurry or move slow?
And while I don’t consciously go through these specific questions every day, I believe it serves as one example of what types of questions we all go through in one form or another, regardless of what time the clock is saying.
While I have not lived much of my life of 50+ years being laser focused on my health status 100% of the time, I have had a few events that motivated a more strict and narrow attention span on the biological part of my existence. As quick example, when I was a child, a broken arm only served as motivation to learn a new life-style around the cast. For whatever line-item reasoning I delivered myself (from the ER staff on down the line), I remember having limited concern about losing my ability to climb neighborhood trees, ride a skateboard, jump on a trampoline…let alone being able to write well enough to get through school.
Instead, I was more anxious to shed myself of something I viewed as…well…an annoyance. I dreaded having to bag my arm, let alone getting the cast wet, just to clean the rest of my biology. And the writing mandates surrounding my life? Let’s just say that OCR tech (that wasn’t around that much at the time) would have had a field day with the original samples my slop represented.
Almost 40 years later, I could not tell you how much my arm hurt, nor what was etched into my cast before it was sawed off, mostly because I saw no value in holding onto the various degrees of pain I felt with the event. For myself, my beliefs center around a premise relying on more and more distance between myself and the event, mostly through patience with time passing in its natural order. In other words, I don’t need to remember the pain to remember just how lucky I have been when it comes to my own personal medical conditions…especially when I have called upon the medical community for help, which has become quite uncommon from a personal needs perspective for a few decades. I healed just fine and because of that, I figured I owed it to myself to continue giving life the best that I’ve got and to the best of my ability.
While I do not remember too many calendar dates associated with a variation in my biological capabilities and capacity, there is one event still relatively fresh in my memory that happened almost 5 months ago.
- It’s a number I know a little differently than many through my former work as a web developer. Perhaps you have encountered a “404 error,” which basically means content is missing at the address being visited. One of my many self-imposed rules when it came to design and development was to ensure, to the best of my ability, that there would be no reason for a 404 error to appear on a website…unless someone else made modifications to the design and/or content. It was part of the reason I chose it as part of my phone number when I did web development years ago as part of an effort to present an esoteric, yet logically creative ambiance surrounding my work.
There are not many dates I have committed to perpetual memory, and certainly more dates carrying remembrance of happiness than anything but, but here in 2022?
My body gave me an “error message” on 4/04 that will linger with my decision trees for the rest of my life…however many minutes, months or decades I end up having opportunities associated with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Early in the morning, as I was in the process of preparing for work, something “snapped” in my head and I was then almost instantly overcome with waves of dizziness and non-stop nausea with heaving. Fundamentally speaking, I am a Wrestler With Words, a Lover Of Lex, a Master of Musings, and yet I remain unsatisfied with the word “snap” relative to the experience, but it’ll have to suffice as a placeholder for now.
Now, the only two issues my biology was going through on a perpetual level is that of psoriasis and AuPause (the medical community calls it “menopause”) and I knew my main priority was to stabilize myself…without knowing for sure exactly how to do it.
Moving myself from where I was to my bed was a chore, but I figured it was the safest place for me to be until I was given reason to make more decisions about what was happening to me.
Ultimately, I found myself battling between just laying down, riding out the dizzy spell and chalking it up to some oddity related to my AuPause once it passed…maybe even calling in sick just to give myself a moment of rest…and the other option of calling 911 and putting myself in the hands of the Medical Community.
We all have our own measuring sticks as to how we evaluate various elements in our lives and mine is a fairly long one as it relates to avoiding the medical community. Part of this comes from a childhood filled with troubles on the homefront whenever I fell ill and the other part fell squarely on the shoulders of the Dollar Sign, as I was uninsured at the time of the event and well, darn it…something happened in my head that triggered the rest of what I was physically feeling.
I finally chose to surrender to the threat of serious debt in exchange for a chance to keep living for however long we could muster a stalling of the dizziness and nausea, mostly because I initially chose to believe in myself enough to believe I could pay off any debt I endured should these circumstances be properly identified and corrective actions were determined and perhaps even implemented. Also, no one was home at the time and if things became physically worse, I was risking even greater damage, especially if I lost my ability to speak.
I dialed 911 and within moments, I was reassured skilled humans were on their way. I slowly lowered myself down and up a flight of stairs to open the door downstairs, repetitively deciding I did not want to stay outdoors while sustaining full permission to make any new decision necessary based on new information.
At this point, I still had no clue what was about to be embedded in future editions of my Medical Record, and I found myself fighting to keep the faith that despite my being uninsured, I’d figure out the price equations, both inside the hospital and after treatment. During these first minutes, the only facts I had on hand was that I had felt a “snap” in my head and then dizziness and nausea ensued. My initial operating theory was that if something was truly, horribly wrong, I wouldn’t be feeling as intact as I was feeling, so surely the price tag would not be entirely unreachable on all levels, including any treatment for what was going on with my biology. While that might have worked under other circumstances and symptoms, little did I know about what was about to show up, mostly thanks to science and thousands of humans developing the tests…but also my making that decision to call for help rather than trying to ride out the circumstances on my own.
The paramedics were AMAZING and certainly helped with my ability to fill my mind with even more hope this wasn’t any big deal, but the larger portion they inspired me to grab a hold of was the eventual decision I made by the time I got to the ER. The decision was fairly simple and straight-forward once I made it–and it was made due to the the thousands upon thousands of choices leading to my need to make such a specific decision about how I was going to approach my immediate future, let alone everything that was destined to be a part of that future due to my current medical situation.
I made the decision to stay all in with whatever was about to be presented to me regarding my biology…and fight back if I felt I was not getting equal service to that of an insured person, let alone treatment I had a right to oppose. I certainly did not make the decision with glee and joy over the opportunity to interact with the medical community, but my continued truth and faith allowed me to remain content with my decision. This sense of content helped balance some of the extremes my mind would travel during my stay, including doubts surrounding the options presented to me once their suspicions were confirmed.
The hospital I was initially taken to was fairly local (I live in a small urban city attached to a large metropolitan area) and the medications they gave me to treat the dizziness eventually kicked in. In an immediate and selfish way, I was quite grateful for, as the throwing up had stopped prior to my climbing into the ambulance. That was two out of two “taken care of,” lending a hand towards the idea of being released sooner rather than later.
Many will understand a “hurry up and wait” atmosphere logistics can create in many settings, but especially when it comes to our individual health care plans and strategies. Our sense of time can shift significantly and we can lose a measure of continuity with how we are counting beats per minute. Despite my slipping in a musical connotation just now (it’s a rhythm section thing, I suppose), our lifestyles provide us a significant measure of structure as it relates to understand the implications of time passing us by while in a hospital setting at varying speeds for any number of reasons.
Eventually, I was transferred to another hospital, which led to my eventually viewing a series of pictures of my aneurysms (a few hand-drawn on a dry-erase board as well as a still shot of both), among other information shared with me regarding potential treatment options. Part of my decision-making process as it related to what steps I could/should/would take were directly related to the main aneurysm being shaped far more like a bean than a berry.
While the medical staff was not convinced my “snap” and My Bean were directly related, its location remains a hint or whiff of possibility in my eyes, for while I still am no “expert” on aneurysms, I am the person who went through the chain of events that led to the discovery and the image reminded me of those long balloons that get blown up and then twisted into various shapes and how–with enough pressure at a certain point–they could pop.
My math was telling me the shape of my aneurysm was hinting at extra weakness along with extra storage space for fluid, thus being able to not only potentially expand even more, but the larger fear associated with aneurysms, that of bursting and thus, we went with a clip strategy, largely due to my aneurysms being unburst.
The fact that aneurysms were found will always hold an extra profound split available only through hind-sight reflection on all of my activities prior to this discovery. There happens to be only two I tend to jump back and forth between from time to time.
One is that I had just finished a stress-filled move less than 2 months earlier. The idea of one having burst during that process is enough to trigger 20+ pages of thoughts and visions as to what “could have happened.” I use quotes because I successfully finished the move, thus rendering all alternate outcomes an exercise in fiction born from fact, and the lessons that can be learned from such an effort.
The other is what could have happened if I had chosen to not ask for immediate help in seeking medical attention by calling 911. I literally felt a need to articulate to myself that making such a phone call was nothing but an act designed to save my own life, while equally challenging such an extreme response based on the symptoms I had at the time, both before and after I dialed the phone, and not exclusively tied to the price tag such a call was about to trigger.
Speaking of hindsight, my mind keeps suggesting all sorts of questions I should have asked during my stay, for while I was in the hospital’s care, I believed I was given enough information to have the decision of a clip in my head and a titanium plate mounted above my mind. Still, despite all the information I lack, it seems to have been the best medical decision I could have made for myself relative to the less-than-attractive lottery ticket I was given the morning of the 4th.
It does not escape me that I could have died at various points in the medical system, including what could have happened had I chosen to just ride out the dizziness in the illusionary safety of my home. I believe my individualized Healh Care System starts and finishes with what I can do with what is shared with me, first via my biology and then the medical professionals that join my health care team to address the issue, even if a team member joins by simple fate of the geographical location of the help I need.
Calling decisions associated with this type of surgery, both burst and unburst, as “profound” seems meek on my part, but words like “cognitive dissonence” seem to be a subset of the experience rather than a primary concept and again, I am in need of a placeholder, if for nothing else than my own sanity purposes.
So far, my physical healing process has been seemingly uneventful as it relates to something that could be considered a concern worthy of pursuit, despite my ending up pushing myself slightly more than some might argue I should have these first months after the surgery.
For example, I walk to work, so for the first week after being released, I went everywhere with crutches, whether I thought I needed them or not. I also found myself frequently lecturing myself out loud to slow down the first few weeks, similar to the cast on the arm principle I shared at the beginning. I also was far more quick to “forgive” myself when I just wasn’t in the mood to do very much the first month or so, which was often. I’ve always been a fan of naps and would not hesitate to sneak in 5 minutes or a few hours at that point in my healing process.
I even used the month of June to begin returning to the local music scene, to see if I could bear the burden of playing a few songs on bass, and I remain biased with my appreciation to have this particular outlet as a regular facet of my lifestyle again. It’s not that I have much talent as a musician or a desire to play often. Rather, it is still having the opportunity to cross all commonly used communication boundaries to spontaneously create…well…music, with the hopes of all those present enjoying the effort. Had even one thing gone in an unpredictable manner, before, during or after the surgery, I could have lost this option, which would have been quite significant on all levels, especially on my intellectual and emotional health.
Even knowing just how close I came to losing even my typing capabilities continues to serve as a reminder of not just how amazing members of the medical profession pledge themselves to grow into, but I am one of the many beneficiaries of their dedication and commitment to learning how to perform procedures related to aneurysms in an effort to reduce the odds of the discovery actually bursting, which is part of why I decided to use a different kind of keyboard to write something for discussion in this particular community.
The posts put into this forum provided me insight and information I wasn’t able to get anywhere else. Some I struggled to understand–for I remain severely lacking in technical terms associated with aneurysms–but even those contributions helped me dare myself to keep moving forward into my own personal unknown future.
And as a retired web publisher, I still harbor the notion that if my words in an original setting can help but one person in a constructive manner, then it’s worth whatever risks come from publishing the words–and despite the liklihood of failing to attract hundreds or even thousands of readers.
I also have a preference for creating Evergreen content when it comes to something I am putting into the digital public–content that can be read in 2022 as well as in 2072, and still have some portion resonate with some relevance to someone’s individual reality, regardless of identifiers beyond words associated with a topic we all share a connection with.
Brain aneurysms.
This past month an angiogram revealed that, biologically speaking, everything is working as it should. THANK YOU TO THE MEDICAL STAFF AND HOSPITAL STAFF!!! Also, a HUGE THANK YOU to all those that provide support in so many different ways, especially this forum!!!
So while this may not be a post for everyone to connect with, thank you for your consideration of my words having potential of helping you along your own personal journey!
