Home Alone

My husband and I are both introverts. Me less so than him, though even that is debatable. One of the things we strive to do to keep our relationship healthy is to give each other “alone at home” time. We are also both geeks. I am a computer programmer with a minor gaming habit and he is a gamer with an intellectual bent. “Gamer” in this instance refers to card games, board games, video games, Dungeons & Dragons (and other RPGs), and just generally games.

Tonight he has gone to our favorite game store, Guardian Games, to play Magic the Gathering. I don’t go as often even when I’m feeling well.

I am home alone. Normally this is a relief. Down time without any people around, not even my awesome fella. Tonight it is not so great.

Alone with my thoughts. Alone with no one to talk to. Not that Isaiah talks much but I talk. He’s a very good listener and when he talks it’s always pretty fantastic. I can ramble and he can pinpoint the positive things to focus on and the wild worries of a difficult mind.

Nineteen days to my surgery. Less than a week to my questions day with the surgeon. A week and a half of work. A major holiday. Some house cleaning. A few happy hours, a couple of lunches. Nineteen days.

The surgeon is going to peal back a flap of skin and cut a two inch square in my skull. I will be dehydrated and pumped full of steroids to make my brain smaller (seriously) so he can lift it out of the way with an object I imagine looks like a shoe horn. Once my brain is out of the way he will check out my cochlea and semicircular canals which all together are about the size of a dime. The key area is my superior semicircular canal which is where the bone thinning is. He will then mix up a special cement made from my own bone dust. He will smear the area with a special gel that will prevent the cement from getting into the porous bone. Then he will slather on the bone cement. Once it’s in place he’ll put everything back as close to how he found it as possible. The two inch square of skull will be latched in place with tiny titanium plates. The flap of skin will be sewn back down with desolving sutures. I will have a crazy groovy scar that will get covered by hair over time.

I will be dizzier, crazier, in more pain, swollen from my head being held in a vice for five hours of surgery, unable to chew, unable to pick up my 10 lbs cats, and hopefully free of weird noises in my ear. Over time, months, the bad stuff will go away and I will turn into a graceful diving, swiming, mountain climbing ballerina with wings. Yeah.

Or I could be partially deaf in one ear. Or my symptoms could change, neither better nor worse. Or or or or.

I really hope I am able to read or do other distracting things during recovery. I know at first it’s going to suck and I am really going to need the distractions. Like tonight. I could really use a distraction tonight. Something more engaging than TV. Some nights it’s just not fun to be home alone.