I Have Bad Brains ⚡

This is the final part of a three-part series about what it is like to deal with dyslexia, seizures, memory loss, and being afflicted with generally bad brains. Check out these 👇.

In those first two parts, ☝ I use available evidence to establish that...

I have fucked-up brains.

⚡ 😁👍 ⚡⚡

In this final installment, I want to tell you what it's like to have a totally-rotten, supremely-discouraged, nightmare-clusterfuck-week from hell... because of bad brains.

Sunday, August 1, wasn't horrible for me. My stupendously-fucked-up-week started with a bad Monday on August 2, 2021. Everything then changed radically for me the very next day, on Tuesday, because on August 3rd, I had another seizure. My seizures wipe out parts of my memory. {See Part 2 ☝ of this series} In this particular instance, the seizure I had on 8/3 prevents me from explaining why 8/2/21 was so bad for me. I don't fully remember. I do remember one of my Monday frustrations, however. I did something really stupid, resulting in me hurting myself.

All my life, I have been highly susceptible to chills. I'm always cold. Constantly. We have a half bathroom right off our bedroom. I tend to keep the airflow register in that bathroom completely closed off this time of year, because that's usually too much cool air for me. I spent a lot of time in our bedroom and prefer our bedroom to be a little warmer than the rest of the air-conditioned house. But Monday was a rare occasion where I was too warm. At one point, when I was using the bathroom, I went to crank open the register— the grate in the floor. And it was stuck. So instead of working to force it open, I just took the metal grate off that air duct hole and set it aside, allowing that chill air to flow.

So then what did my dumb ass do? About three hours later I went back into the same bathroom and, having forgotten I opened up that hole, I stepped in it! My left foot dropped down an extra eight inches or so, slamming onto the concrete slab this house sits on. I screamed in pain.

For a moment, I thought I broke my heel bone.

The soreness continued into the next day (and two days beyond that). I tried to stay off that foot as much as possible. I've broken bones in the last year so I'm well-acquainted with that kind of injury. Hurting my heel this time wasn't quite that bad... but for about forty-eight hours, the pain was damn close.

I can't remember what else happened that Monday but, generally, that day sucked.

Both Sunday & Monday, I was working hard on a short story for a challenge here on Vocal: the Golden Summer contest. My first draft was done by Monday but, as usual, it was too long— way too long this time. (Brevity and I have a severely troubled relationship.) I was working on condensing my story, which includes dancing marigolds.

So Tuesday, the 3rd of August, was the deadline for that Golden Summer challenge. I woke up that day and immediately continued tweaking and compressing my story. That same morning, my future husband was hard at work on a project of his own, a labor of love. Demetrious has a little Bob-the-Builder in him. He's already accomplished, knowledgable, and extremely talented at his job as a cheerleading coach, but for the last year, he's been teaching himself how to build things by watching videos on YouTube. He's very passionate about his new hobby and it's so much fun to be around the enthusiasm he generates while chasing his dream.

I love him with all my heart. ❤

So the entire week before, the last week of July, Demetrious was busy in his free time building a piece of furniture for his best boo. It turned out great! I watched as the long, raw lumber D brought home from Lowes (or was it Home Depot?) was slowly transformed into a way-cool end-table. It was finally completed that Tuesday and my fiancé was working on the final touch: staining it.

Our house is really fucked-up right now. It's all my fault. All the problems date to long before I met Demetrious. Last year, we discovered we had mold and had to rip out floors and walls to get rid of it. We haven't completed the build-back. I'll tell that story another time. What's relevant today is: we currently have no functional kitchen and, instead, that space is Demetrious's temporary workshop. This pic shows the end-table he was making for his boo in a very early stage of development (in our messed-up kitchen.) 👇

So Tuesday morning, I was in our bedroom working on my marigolds story (working titles: either The Webs We Weave... or... Green is My Love?) and Demetrious was staining the end-table in the kitchen. Well, the fumes wafted back through the house and slowly started bothering me. At one point, I went into the living room and I damn near fell over, becoming momentarily dizzy. I knew then for certain the fumes were truly messing with my already fucked-up brain. So I went outside into the backyard with the laptop. I was going to sit in a lawn chair outside in the fresh air and finish my story.

At some point, it seems I popped back inside for a moment. Demetrious later told me that it was while I was standing at the back door that the seizure hit me. 😭😭😭

He helped me to bed.

From my perspective— I was in the backyard, and then I woke up in bed. When I regained consciousness, I saw the laptop across the bedroom on the dresser and I knew I had not put it there. So I deduced, yup, once again, I've had another seizure. 😕 Lost time.

Demetrious confirmed I had one. While I was unconscious, he had taken everything he was working on outside so the fumes wouldn't bother me further. He's an absolutely extraordinary man. I adore him. He takes awesome care of me, he's loyal and kind and true, and he certainly wouldn't have painted in the kitchen in the first place if he'd had an inkling I would be so adversely affected. Neither of us knew.

We live and we learn.

D had to leave for work shortly after I regained awareness. He had our boo (his best boo) come over later to check on me. I was okay, but tired— so very, very tired. That generally happens with my seizures. I sleep a lot afterward. Of course, most of my seizures happen at night, (close to, or) during a sleep cycle. Exhaustion is one possible cause I strongly suspect is a catalyst for my brain malfunctions. It was unusual to be hit with a seizure early in the day on that Tuesday.

I'm certain it was the fumes that sparked it.

So that evening, by necessity, I abandoned trying to finish my marigold story. I couldn't wake up long enough to do it. I would wake up briefly, stay conscious for a half-hour, an hour at most, and then go right back to sleep. That pattern continued the rest of Tuesday and into Tuesday night.

As it turns out, even if I had finished the challenge, I would have failed it. I mistakenly thought I was working with a 3,000-word limit and the actual limit was 2,000. So even if I completed the condensation I was working on and submitted, I would have been over the limit by 1,000 words.

Wednesday, 8/4, was a total waste for me, almost a blur. I was conscious for brief periods and then I'd fall asleep for a couple of hours. I slept incessantly, even though I had slept most of the previous day and the bulk of the night. The recovery time seemed longer to me this time than for my typical breakthrough seizures. I always sleep a lot after one, but not as much as I did that Tuesday-Wednesday.

This one affected me emotionally too. These brain malfunctions discourage me. They're depressing. Generally speaking, I try to maintain a positive attitude. But sometimes this fucked-up brains shit seriously challenges my ability to remain positive.

And I feel sorry for Demetrious, for a whole bunch of reasons. He has to deal with me while I'm dealing with this. And I'm not easy to deal with! I'm highly emotional on a good day. But then, getting hit with whole string of bad days just shattered me. I was off-the-hook super emotional. Pathetic. To the extent that— old pessimistic thinking was gurgling in my head. Shit like...

Life sucks, and then you die.

I used to think that exact quote ☝ on a loop in my head when I was in my twenties. It's pessimistic bullshit!! 👎😠⚡ I rebuke it!!!

So yeah. <sigh> This 'breakthrough seizure' left me feeling very low. To recap: I had a bummer Monday... a Seizure Tuesday... an unconscious Wednesday... and a muzzy, depressed, over-sensitive, over-emotional Thursday. Then when Friday rolled around, I was blasted with some shitty news to start my day.

I have issues with my prostate. I have difficulty emptying my bladder. These are problems that only cropped up in the last few years. Because I finally got health insurance as a result of having these seizures, I was also able to see specialists about these other issues I have. Months ago, a urologist decided I needed a biopsy on my prostate. It was thirteen kinds of excruciating hell! I'll spare you the details (so I can use them in a horror story someday. <shudder>) After that torturous procedure, I was told in a follow-up visit that I had cancer. ☹ But, I was told by this doctor, it's the 'best kind' of cancer. Meaning: it's the kind of cancer that grows the slowest. He told me, since I'm sixty years old, I could be dead before this cancer is an issue that would ever even need treatment.

Basically: no worries. ⚡😁👍

Flash-forward a few months and the same doctor's office contacted me. A nurse told me they wanted me to do a special kind of MRI. This is another long story I'll try to shorten. It was a clusterfuck! A directed MRI on the pelvis is more complicated than a 'normal' MRI and there is only one machine within sixty miles of here that can perform that scan— it's in downtown Indianapolis, about forty miles from where I live. Going that distance to a hospital in Indy is no big deal. Demetrious takes me wherever I need to go. He's extraordinary! 💙+ 💚= 💘 What made the experience overly difficult was that they kept scheduling me at locations with regular MRI machines (which were unable to perform the procedure), before they finally got their shit together and sent me to the place in Indy that could do the test.

Anyway...

On Friday, August 6th, they called me to tell me they found "two areas of concern," places the hellish biopsy hadn't taken tissue samples from. I was informed I have to go back all the way to downtown Indy, so they can put me in that same pelvis-scan-capable MRI machine, so they can do a directed biopsy, sticking a needle up my ass to take tissue samples from these two troublesome spots. <sigh>

I'm not really worried about cancer. Cancer did kill my mother. Still, despite being on hand to watch that happen to her, it doesn't scare me. I trust in God.

That Friday morning, I didn't think receiving that news had any effect on me.

🤣😂

A few hours later, while Demetrious was at work, I had a pretty ugly emotional breakdown. I started crying, and it turned into bawling, and then into screaming and howling and just a savage outpouring of grief. It was intense. I'm always emotional anyway. Tears well up in my eyes for anything even slightly sentimental. Demetrious and I will be watching some show on TV, and there will be an emotional scene, and D will look and me and giggle because I'll be sniffling. That's typical for me. But this cry to end that horrible week wasn't typical. It was brutal. I'm surprised my voice wasn't gone after all the yelling I did. And then, after it was all out of my system, I didn't know what I felt in the wake of such protracted crying. Shaky. Unsteady. Stunned.

I can't drive, because of these seizures. On that hot, sunny Friday afternoon, I decided to take a walk, just to clear my head. I had just reached the end of the short street I live on when I saw a neighbor out in front of his house, watering his flowerbeds.

I would guess this guy is in his early 70s, roughly ten years older than me. He has a small business he runs out of a shop behind his house. He's a hypnotherapist. Using hypnotic suggestions, he assists people in overcoming the desire to smoke, aids people who over-eat and want to lose weight, and helps people generally to quash bad habits. Many months ago, I went to see him once, for a single session. I'm very interested in hypnosis, but more as a means to possibly access memories from past incarnations. Hypno-regression.

But I'd had a session with him in the past... so I knew him. I waved as I was walking by and I said cheerfully, "How you doing?"

He looked up, still holding the gushing hose in his hand, and said, "I had a heart attack earlier this week."

I left the street and walked into his yard, saying, "Oh my God! I had a bad seizure earlier this week!"

I told him what happened to me (leaving out the part that I had just earlier that afternoon been crying like a freaking lunatic.) He told me that he had spent four days in the hospital. He told me he was fine now but would have to seriously limit his salt intake in the future, down to virtually nothing. He said, "Salt is in everything." I felt bad for him. I love salty food.

We talked a little more. At one point, he said, "Every day is a gift!"

For real, for real! That is sort of an old person's perspective, don't you think? But it's valid! It's true. It's reality.

Gratitude is the attitude. ⚡🙏🏻

I eventually said my farewells and continued my walk, making the turn down the street that leads out of our neighborhood. And thinking about the 'chance' meeting, I was struck by the 'coincidences'. I just happened to be walking by the guy's house at the precise time he was watering his flowers... and he had a heart attack practically the same day I had my emotionally devastating seizure.

I thought about how I feel no pain. I just have lost memories, lost time. But I never suffer the agony of a heart attack. Compared to him, I am lucky.

I thought about how I have bad brains and prostate cancer. And suddenly it just struck me in a sarcastic, amusing moment that those two conditions seem like cosmic Justice.

I think I'm oh-so-very smart! When I was a kid in the 1960s, Yogi bear would say something about he was "smarter than the average bear." That's me! At times in my life, I've been way too arrogant about my intelligence.

So I think I'm so smart? The Universe be like, 'Here's some seizures to remind you that you aren't as smart as you think you are! Karma!'

And the prostate cancer? That's certainly easy to interpret through a karmic lens.

I'm a pain in the ass!

For real, for real!

Thinking about the encounter with my neighbor, I said aloud, "I've got bad brains and I've got ass cancer. But guess what? I've got a good heart!"

I laughed.

Life is 1% what happens to us and 99% how we react to it. Everything is perspective! Two people can have exactly the same circumstances smash into their lives and one says, "This is a calamity! I don't deserve this! This isn't fair!" Simultaneously, the other guy experiencing the exact same thing is looking at it like, "This is an opportunity! This isn't fun, but I can learn from this experience! I can grow and be stronger because of this."

As I continued walking, I kept repeating it to myself aloud and chuckling, "Yeah, you've got a fucked-up brain, __Bolt, but you've got a good heart."

It resonated with me especially because other people have often said that about me. "He's got a good heart." I'm generous. I'm sensitive. I love to make people laugh. I cry easily, but I also laugh a lot. Not everyone gets my sense of humor, but even if they don't, they generally recognize that I don't take myself too seriously (mostly). I like self-disparaging humor. I try to be brutally honest about my flaws. I'm hardheaded about certain things. As already established, I'm way over-emotional. I'm a slob. I have a lot of insecurities. And I have a horrible temper (that I absolutely loathe). I'm my own worst enemy. I find it easier to forgive others than myself.

I am a seriously flawed individual...

But I've got a good heart. ⚡💙⚡

So then.... later that same Friday night, something else happened that put me right back in that horrible headspace. I won't go into details. Bottom line: I went right back to being an emotional train wreck and didn't get a wink of sleep all that night. It wasn't until roughly 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday that I finally dozed off. I then slept until about 6:30 that evening.

When I woke up, the thing that had put me in a bad headspace the night before? It was completely, simply resolved, much to my total relief. I felt drained and still weary, but all that emotional pain from the day before was utterly gone.

So then what did I do?

Completely without any forethought, I spontaneously reached for the laptop. And I started to write.

⚡😁😁😁😁😁👍⚡⚡⚡

Heretofore, before that Saturday evening, 8/7/21, all the new stories I've written for Vocal's fiction section— and even for the Top Ten List I wrote for the Beat community here— I thought and thought and thought about what I was going to write before I ever penned the first word. I brainstormed, conceptualized, figured out the characters, figured out the best point of view, figured out the story's ending, working all kinds of details in my mind in the days preceding when I actually ever started to write.

The unplanned writing I did after that miserable week, however— I just instinctively went with first person, since it's true personal reflections. I wrote for hours, then edited for many more hours. I was up until almost 5 am the next morning on Sunday, before I finally forced myself to turn off the laptop to sleep. I went to bed thinking it would be a single post. Then the next day, I realized how fucking long it was. 🤣😂 So I split it up. What I had spontaneously spewed out was most of Part One and Part Two of this series: I Have Bad Brains.

There is a fine line between tragedy and comedy. It's nearly impossible to have a really great comedy without some tragic elements.

Writing this, for me, was basically a kind of poor man's therapy. I sought to take all the hurt and confusion and discouragement that I was feeling and tip it on its heels to reveal some comedy. That was the intent behind parts one and two of this series. Whether or not I was successful, you be the judge.

As this for this final part, the tone I was going for was 'inspirational.' I hope you found this uplifting in some way.

No matter how badly your week is going, if you keep your mind open and your eyes peeled for the positive— it is there! I was so very horribly hurt thinking about how screwed-up my brain is... until I just shifted my focus and concentrated on my great heart. It's not easy to make those shifts in perspective. But again, it's like a muscle. The more you do it, the easier it gets!

So that's it. Think of me if your current circumstances aren't what you'd like! Whatever you're going through, at least you don't have bad brains! Right?

Focus on the light!

⚡😁👍

Thanks for reading! If you are finding this last part of the series first, please consider going back to read the other two parts, which do have more humor.

Thank you kindly for your support!

______________________Bolt ⚡