Brain Surgery Recovery: Seven/Eight Weeks Processing
It was not at exactly six weeks when I had a positive shift in my physical experience, but more like six and a half/seven weeks. Almost two weeks ago, I went for a walk, and I was able to feel good doing it. Rather than the slow, clumsy shuffle down the road, breathing deeply, lying down for a couple hours afterwards… I was able to have a long enough stride to prompt my arms to swing along. I enjoyed the experience of walking itself, rather than just the win of being able to walk at all. That really meant something to me. A shift! Something had changed.
So I walked a mile a day for ten days in a row, resting on day 11 due to a cold (thank you, daycare) and being exhausted from a busy morning, and then walked the next two mornings. I feel ready to ask my doctor if I can start exercising again - starting slow, seeing what happens. I miss running. I miss racing. I haven’t raced since before the pandemic. Man I could go for a big chunky medal right about now.
I get tired somewhat unpredictably, still. I will sit and have a conversation for 90 minutes and will want to fall asleep by minute 85. I will write all afternoon and feel able to get dinner ready. I will take a walk and then start laundry. I will take walk a block later that day and start to tremble and feel my head want to spin.
The double vision persists. I am unlikely to be cleared to drive tomorrow, and I’m not sure I would want to be anyway. Or maybe I can drive with an eye patch, who knows? Yar.
The dominant right eye shows me what it sees and the partially paralyzed left eye gives me a blurry overlay of what it sees that hovers below and to the left of what the right eye offers. I am told by others who have had a similar experience that the senses, when affected by a head trauma/surgery like this, can take months to return to normal. I have been doing some eye exercises to help support. Sometimes the two eyes line up and my images of the world become one single blurry one. I took it for granted before. I hope I never do again.
My mind is still variable. I’ve told a few people already that it is like my memories and what knowledge I have are stuffed away in a room full of filing cabinets, and the doorway is blocked by a large pile of beanbags. Like, sure, I can get in there, but it will take several weird moments to do so.
I also keep feeling a lot of emotional sensation in my body - trembling, nausea, tightness in my gut, a sinking feeling in my chest, longing, tears, rage, etc.
And so I have been contemplating the possible presence of somatic trauma. We know that the trauma people experience before they are verbal and making narrative/explicit memories hangs on in their bodies, even if they do not have the words or clear memories to explain it. I’ve wondered. Because I did agree to the surgery, and the surgery saved my life; and yet, I was afraid before I went under, and my body did not have the intellectual context for being paralyzed and cut open - helpless.
I wasn’t even there to soothe it and calm it with slow breathing and reassuring eye contact with the one I love, like during my C-section. I was gone. It was just my physical form, for over six hours, trying to survive with no control, no way to move or do anything. And when I woke again? There I was stuck in a bed with one eye swollen shut, unable to eat or drink without vomiting. What on earth was my body supposed to make of that? So this big physical trauma happened, and I have no narrative memory of it, and unclear/vague memories of the first week of recovery, which was painful and uncertain.
It does not surprise me that this lingers.
A therapist is helpful in organizing the process of reprocessing, and while I do happen to be one, I acknowledge that this current solo project is likely, in part, due to an aversion to being vulnerable in a particular way in front others and also a preference for doing things as I want to do them (working on it); and yet, it has also been very helpful to return to that space with myself, for myself, and with the consent of myself.
So far, I have targeted the image of being wheeled back into surgery, watching distance grow between my partner and me as he watched me go back there, and then moving from the gurney to the operating table in a strange, dissociated mental state - and even making a joke that I can’t remember (I suspect I had already been given some anxiety medication in my IV). The first belief attached to that image? “I’m helpless.” You can imagine the emotions that go with that and the intensity. Several threads tied onto that target.
There were intense emotions that went with those threads. I had to feel them, stay with them, allow them to come out. Their intensity was not a problem or pathological. These sensations are reasonable reactions to an event like this. So now that it is safe, they can be felt. They are okay. And, as they were felt, space opened up for more nuance. More truth was allowed to surface.
The intensity of that image has decreased. There are still targets to work through, and now that I’ve stirred it up, I feel the nausea/anxious/heartache a bit more often. And yet, I feel able to proceed. I am still reactive and easily move into fight/flight or just weeping, but I am better able to catch it and sit with it, rather than react to the reaction. We’ll see where this gets me and go from there.
Life continues to have beautiful moments. I watch my girl take her first tentative steps; I listen to her laugh and try out words like, “apple,” “banana,” and, “thank you.” I watch the leaves change (I see two trees for the price of one, heyyyy) and feel the breeze on my walks. I look into my partner’s eyes as he tells me I’m beautiful, and I think to myself, “Even now?” and marvel at love’s impact on perspective. I sit beside a window on a rainy day and work on a novel while my baby girl naps. I read books and watch comfort shows and make myself quesadillas and oatmeal. I light incense and watch it float into the sky, thanking everything involved for the life I get to keep on living, because it is not a given and it is not an entitlement. I am just here. And even with all the frustration, all the grief, all the fear of losing everything - including that frustration and grief - I am a lucky person to go on feeling it. I am still here, at this moment.
On we go.
