Yesterday I scheduled brain surgery for myself. It sounds so weird. You’d think that if I was going to have brain surgery I wouldn’t be able to schedule it for myself, I must be a vegetable or drooling at the very least. Instead I’m just in pain and sick.
I’m still trying to figure out how to tell everyone. Some people know but it’s been very scattered based on who I bump into or not.
Last year I had a different brain surgery for a different problem. Last year I wrote tons of update emails and kept everyone in the loop. I was delirious and on pain killers and not working.
Now I have a problem that pain killers don’t really help. Sure I get loopy but the pain is still maddeningly there. (I wonder if the last name Mattingly is a shortening of Maddeningly.) I am working. I miss a lot of days but I still can work on good days.
Last year I had a Dural Arteriovenous Malformation. Now it’s my Superior Canal Dehiscence. Spellcheck hates my issues.
Last year the surgeon threaded a tube into my femoral artery, up through my heart and jugular to the arteries in my head and embolized two of the way too many arteries I have up there. In December a different surgeon is going to drill through my skull collecting bits along the way then use those bits to plug the hole in my superior semicircular canal (part of the inner ear).
I’m obsessed with the inner ear right now. I’ve been designing T-shirts, flasks and buttons that show the inner ear and try to express what that hole looks like. I haven’t finished descriptions or figuring out how much I want to try to make off each T-shirt but I’ve got a neat little Cafe Press store front to maybe sell my wares.
Right now I’m in bed trying to lay very still. I had some testing done on my balance this morning and I feel like throwing up. I’ll wax poetic about what it’s like to have a Superior Canal Dehiscence plenty later. Right now let’s just say that I am ridiculously unable to remain vertical with my eyes closed.
Rebekah Golden 