Questions on the Brain: An Unforgettable Year

“What were you doing a year ago?”

This is the meme’s first question. A “meme” is a questionnaire that floats from blogger to blogger, teasing out precious personal details to help forge bonds between writers from different generations, continents, and cultures. Last month, I was sent multiple memes to answer. Many of them started with the same query.

“What were you doing a year ago?”

The question is simple. Answering has been difficult.

A year ago today was March 10, 2007. I lived in the same house and had the same friends as I do now. I’d left my demanding lawyer job several years before. After many years of working long hours, I appreciated having time to read, to cook, to go for walks, and to help make a pleasant world for my family. My marriage was strong. Life was good.

A year ago today, I made Pan-Fried Scallops with Celery Root and Bacon for dinner. It was a hit; my calendar gives it multiple stars. I should’ve written down the recipe; I didn’t.

A year ago today, I had a horrible headache.

I’ve had a lifetime of migraines and long ago accepted headaches as an unremarkable fact of life. Modern pharmaceuticals turned my migraines into mere annoyances; pain that could be vanquished with a timely dose of medicine.

A year ago today, I had a headache that wasn’t a migraine. It lasted for days and nothing I did made it go away.

On February 27, I’d been reading when the headache first struck. One second I was laughing at my book; the next it felt as if someone had soundly whacked me in the head with a sledgehammer.

After catching my breath and getting my bearings, I stumbled to the kitchen and took my migraine medicine. When the first dose didn’t work, I took some more. That didn’t work either. I made dinner through a haze of pain.

That night I medicated myself to sleep, and woke up with a headache the next morning. For the next couple weeks, my daily calendar carefully notes the headache, the combination of medications I took to combat it, the headache’s persistence despite everything, and what I made for dinner.

The calendar entries are weirdly incongruous, e.g. “headache intolerable, bad vertigo, imitrex useless, vicodin no impact, Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Swiss Chard and Duck Sauce.” Another day: “woke with headache, progressively worse, spent day in dark room, Squid in Tomato Sauce with Stir-Fried Chinese Broccoli.”

A year ago today, the headache had been going strong for 11 days and my husband went from suggesting I see a doctor, to insisting I do so as soon as possible. My head hurt too much to argue.

The next week was a flurry of medical appointments and tests. By March 21, I was on an operating table in Seattle having my skull sawed open.

A year ago today, I’d been living with a ruptured brain aneurysm.

I’m extraordinarily lucky. I survived the original rupture, an event which has a 50% fatality rate. My surgeon successfully clipped the aneurysm, and screwed and stitched my head back together. I emerged from the surgery mentally intact, an outcome far from certain at the outset. Today I'm healthy and enjoying blue skies and sun reflecting off the snow.

Did I mention I was lucky?

Lucky, yes definitely. But I’m not the same person I was before.

A year ago today, I was myself as I used to be: strong, bossy, confident, and capable. I was articulate and well-read, the result of a lifetime of pouring through multiple books a week. I was very happy and very sad, and everywhere in between, but was mostly able to keep my emotions (except for occasional flashes of temper) to myself.

Now. How now? I look the same and sound the same and try my best to act the same. But now, my emotions are right on the surface and I’ve turned into a weeper. I’m more than a little timid, and have a very low frustration point. Conflict is excruciating. I shy away from social interactions, and need to spend a lot of time alone. Noise and hubbub are unbearable.

Intellectually, I understand all my behavioral changes are related to the brain surgery and are common in brain injury sufferers. Emotionally, it feels like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone and some other, paler and wimpier, version of me is occupying my body. So I wait and hope the behavioral changes will resolve over time, as they often do, and I’ll regain more of my old self.

I can no longer read books. I permanently lost most of the vision in my left eye within hours of the surgery. The vision damage interferes with my ability to focus on a printed page. For a lifetime bookaholic, this has been the most dramatic life changing event of all. I haven’t yet accepted the loss.

Even with this most difficult of challenges, I’m lucky. Although books are beyond me for now, I can easily read a computer screen.

On the computer, I discovered, explored, investigated, and entered the world of food blogging, all of which has greatly enriched my life. I enjoy the regular glimpses into lives of fellow bloggers, many of whose warmth and kindness have unknowingly helped me navigate the challenges of my new life.

Without books to read, I have time to focus on writing, something I’ve long wanted to do. It's the second best thing to have come out of my experiences during the last year.

The best thing? The best thing is the love and support I’ve received from my husband, sister and brother-in-law, parents, brother and sister-in-law, far-away sister, in-laws in this country and Greece, and friends. Without all of them, I couldn’t have managed and doubt I would've survived. I’m forever grateful to a degree that is impossible to express in writing.

A year ago today, I took my happy life for granted. Today, I remember that everything can change in a minute.

So for Susan, Gretchen, Núria, Shayne, and Ivy, all of whom sent me memes, thank you for thinking of me. I hope you’ll agree that answering the meme’s first question was fully enough.

Readers don’t worry. For my next post, I’ll be back to writing about food.