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colorado-roots · 6 years

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Perspective 10-Months Post Unexpected Brain Surgery

Less than 24 hours out of brain surgery, I was walking around the ICU with my IVs attached to me, my head wrapped tight in bandages and waving to everyone like I was the bloody Queen of England. A few hours after my royal parade, I received my hospital discharge papers with “very pleasant 22-year-old female,” written in the patient description box, and the neurosurgeon’s blessing to go home (nod to you, Dr. Dad!)

When I got home, I slept about 20 hours a day for a week straight. I looked like I was in a fight I had lost. I had a black eye, 12 staples in my skull and a long line of stitches down the side of my face. In order to remove the mass and clean the brain bleed, my entire jaw had been cut through and I could barely open my mouth. And to add to the list, I wore a very large back brace to support the fracture in my spine that came from falling into a hotel bathtub.

But despite everything, I was in an indescribable awe for life. It was like every deliberate choice I had made up to that point was unknowingly preparing me for this.

Most days I would wake up to a natural high, overjoyed to be recovering. But there were also days I would be jolted awake at 4 a.m. from pain, or nightmares that were only memories.

I was scheduled to have a final job interview a week after my surgery. I agreed to have it because I had absolutely nothing to lose. By some miracle, my now-boss was out of town, so it was over the phone, providing no proof that it was my first day out of bed, or that I was writing every word of our conversation down so I wouldn’t forget what she said. Somehow it worked (and that’s a whole other story).

I went from lying in bed the entire month of May, to working 40-hour weeks in June. In between preserving my energy and working, I had more MRIs than I can count on two hands, and numerous other brain tests to undergo until I was cleared from any more surgeries.

Many of my Friday evenings were hospital appointments. My mom took me to all of them. She would sit and hum in the waiting room, covering the silence. When the nurses would call my name, she would follow me, scared to let me go alone.

One appointment, the neurosurgeon left the room saying, “you were lucky.” Lucky that the tumor was benign and in an accessible part of my brain. Lucky that I didn’t have a massive stroke the week leading up to my surgery. And most of all, lucky that I woke up from the one and only seizure I’ve ever had.

Lucky is not the most comforting word to come from someone that performs craniotomies daily. I was pushing the limits to remain relevant in my own life. Out of all the hard conversations I’ve had with a neurosurgeon, this one struck the cord that shattered the blissful ignorance I was living in.

When it feels like you’ve hit a wall at 22, it’s a bit like getting your heart broken; you lose a lot of your confidence, wonder what you did wrong and why it happened, except instead of being told you’re better off as friends, you’re dealing with a brain tumor.

But it’s funny how life seeks forgiveness. Luckily, I’ve always been quick to forgive.

To put it into perspective, my brain was functioning at 40 percent, rather than the 99 percent (ok, maybe 90...) it was before I got sick. I started to care a whole lot less about a lot of things, not because they weren’t important, but because it wasted a lot of energy, and mostly because I realized in the big picture those things probably shouldn’t have been as high of a priority in the first place.

It took a lot of mental practice to not be bothered with life going on around me. I started to care less that my friends were moving on with their post-grad lives, getting new apartments and going out at night. And I definitely didn’t care (as much) that my slowpitch beer-league team’s record was less than .500 (sorry guys...)

I didn’t seem to mind that my mom had to drive me to my friends’ houses like she did when I was in 8th grade. I was grateful for the ride and for an extremely patient family and compassionate friends.

I became grateful that the neurosurgeon said I was lucky, even if the luck came out of a brief, unlucky moment.

I’m grateful that I can now drive even though it hurts my back to check the blind spots. And I’m grateful that haircuts will be the most terrifying appointment I will ever have to make for my head again.

It’s been 10 months since my parade around the ICU. The physical brain takes more than a year to recover. This time last year I hadn’t even taken my final college exams. Sometimes everything feels unreal. But I constantly remind myself to be grateful for what I love, what I lost and the in-between, because gratefulness is having an abundant mindset and an abundant mindset in fact, heals.

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colorado-roots · 7 years

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The Future is Bright, Class of 2017

Bouncing back from a life-threatening detour, one month after finishing college

I remember stacking all my hard classes into the Winter Quarter of my junior year of college, right after I got back from studying abroad. I did not take a light load, because I was adamant on finishing my undergraduate career the following winter. That was the beauty of the quarter system, you could finish early, and get a head start on life.

By the time my final undergraduate quarter came around, I was pursuing a full-time job search. I was putting hours into the process, and was determined to have one lined up soon after I finished my classes. I went into the search with confidence, and things were going smoothly, but slowly. I faced job rejections like most do, and was waiting to hear back from others.

I am usually a very low-stress, go with the flow type of person, but I had put pressure on myself to get ahead from the beginning. I began to notice subtle occurrences in my life that felt unusual, and I did not understand why they were happening. I became discouraged with how drawn out the process felt and decided I needed to do something.

The end of April crept up, and in typical me fashion, I invited myself onto my friends’ planned out trip to Jazz Fest in New Orleans as a graduation celebration. As we were getting on the plane, we joked that we all forgot our health insurance cards, and how ironic it would be if one of us ended up in the hospital. We spent our days at the festival and our nights out on Bourbon; young and alive.

Sunday rolled around, and the festival was postponed due to flooding. I was not feeling well and fell asleep for a few hours. When I woke up, they had just reopened the fairgrounds. I popped up from my makeshift bed on the floor, and stated that I wanted to go see Tom Petty.

That’s when everything became blurry. My heart was racing. I was extremely nauseous. I walked towards the bathroom, past my friends. The next thing I remember, I was lying in the bathtub, my feet hanging over the edge and the shower curtain under me. One of my friends was holding my hand. A strange man was standing above me, asking if I knew where I was, and if I knew my name. I was mad because obviously I knew those answers, but I couldn’t communicate them. I thought I was having a nightmare, but I couldn’t wake up.

I have a very blurred memory of being in the back of the ambulance. My friend gave me my phone and I was constantly refreshing my emails, like I was waiting for something important.

I was shifting in and out of consciousness when we arrived at the hospital. I vaguely remember a doctor coming into the room. All my friends were there with me, and he very seriously asked if he could speak in front of them. I said yes, still oblivious to my surroundings. He explained to me that I had experienced a grand mal seizure that lasted about five minutes and that I had stopped breathing for a period of time. He went on to say that my CT scan showed a spot that looked like a brain tumor or a blood clot, and that I needed a MRI immediately.

I was thrusted back into reality, and glanced over at my friends, who were sitting in a line along the wall. They were staring back at me, their mouths open wide. My parents were on the other end of the conversation back in Denver. I don’t even want to know what their expressions were.

I slowly got up from my seat on the bed, and a sharp pain shot down my spine. I have always been an active and health conscious person. I was in good shape, training for a half marathon, but I had fractured my back from the fall. I was forced into a wheelchair, and was carted off into a world spinning too fast for me to comprehend. My life seemed to be rapidly slipping out of my control.

I remember waking up after the MRI and the doctor telling me I had a malformation that resembled a rasberry of tangled blood vessels. It was very likely still bleeding, and going to cause another threatening seizure. I was probably born with it, and time is what set it off. He told me I should not catch my flight back to Denver the next day because he wanted to get me into brain surgery. I said I would absolutely not be having brain surgery until I got home.

I was checked into the ICU, where my neighbors were recovering from strokes and aneurysms. Yet, here I was, a twenty-two year old, recent college grad, being pumped with anticonvulsants and brain surgery in my future.

I became super insistent that I wasn’t going to stay. Reluctantly, my doctors agreed to let me go home. My mom walked in the door a few hours later, and back to Denver we flew.

Now the perks of this happening to me, is that my dad is a physician. He forced his way onto the schedule of one of Colorado’s highly esteemed neurosurgeons. I had my consultation with him, and we scheduled the thing.

The few days leading up to it were a blur. I felt brain dead from my medication and could only joke about the situation. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t sad, but hell yeah, I was mad. I don’t think I ever went through the teen angst stage, but I definitely had it that week. I could not understand what I did to deserve this; to put my life on hold and only hope for the best. I remember wondering if I would walk across the stage of my college graduation with a shaved head, however, my surgeon assured me that he would save my hair. I saw and heard from so many of my friends and family, and they were frightened for me. All I could do was reassure them that everything would be okay.

I woke up the the morning of my surgery ready to go. It was game day. I knew that this might be the second worst day of my life, thus far, but it wasn’t going to stop me from trying to make it somewhat normal. I joked with the nurses and doctors. I said that if by some miracle the mass had disappeared, then I wasn’t going to have the surgery. I got another MRI to map out the area and the surgeon said, “Well Corin, it’s still there.”

The anesthesiologist came in and said he was going to put something into my IVs that would make me feel relaxed, and that I should say bye to my parents for now. As they wheeled me out of the room, my parents got emotional. I held back the tears and said, “Can you have dinner ready when I get back?”

They rolled me back to the operating room, where I am certain they were jamming to ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ by AC/DC, but I could have been mistaken, I was pretty drugged up. They handed me a mask to put over my mouth, and I was out.

I woke up eight hours later in the ICU. My mom was shoveling Jell-O down my throat as the nurses pumped morphine into my body. I felt so sick and so confused. My veins and head were on fire. I remembered why I was there, and reached for my head.

My dad told me that my procedure lasted four hours, and that it was successful. They had to make a bigger incision than they had anticipated because my brain was still bleeding. I was most concerned with the fact that the halo they put on my head during the surgery accidentally pierced the middle of my forehead, and that I’d have a scar front and center as a daily reminder of what I went through.

It has been three weeks since my procedure, and I am doing really well. Recovering from brain surgery is not the easiest process, but I am dealing with it. Being young and healthy has made my experience smoother than most people’s. I have beat all the odds.

I’ve struggled with guilt. Guilt that I got off easy, and that others with this problem were not as fortunate. Nonetheless, I have counted my blessings. I still have a few steps to go, but it shouldn’t hold me back much longer. The truth is, recovery is easy if you are fighting for the life you envisioned for yourself.

People have asked me why I am handling this with so much positivity. I respond every time saying perspective is everything. It could have ended a lot worse, or happened in a different way. I could have been driving. I could have been a mother, or had a steady job. I could have been old. It could have bled more. It could have been cancer. But here I am, living somewhere in the middle of fate. I still have the rest of my life ahead of me, and I will never let this take anymore of my time. I lost a few months, but then again, I gained a lifetime.

The pain has given me wisdom. It has prepared me for whatever lies ahead. It wasn’t the road I had planned on taking, but it made me a helluva lot stronger.

It taught me to take every failure, every rejection, every opportunity and be persistent. Hard times are sometimes inevitable. I am so lucky mine just left a six inch scar on the side of my head.

Your hard times are probably different. It could still be affecting you or you could have already grown from it. There is no scale for comparison. Your feelings are yours to feel, no matter the circumstance. Do not discount them. But be resilient. You have a lot of road left to travel, and many places to stop along the way. Take the hard times presented to you and learn from them. There will be moments you feel discouraged, but persist on. All good things in life take time.

I stumbled upon this quote a week after my surgery. It read, “Sometimes we get caught up chasing the biggest and the best. The newest and the next. Slow down, look up. Notice the miracle in this moment. This might just be the one you didn’t realize you were fighting for.”

#health #brain #college #gratitude #inspiration

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colorado-roots · 7 years

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