This here is a picture (albeit fuzzy) of me on Halloween, 2011. I was swollen, puffy, everywhere. I was tired. I was sick. The main body of my costume consisted of polyester pajamas. (This is one of my first attempts at inserting an image into a post, so please bear with me.)
I didn’t care. I just wanted to get through it.
Going into Party City to find something to wear for the holiday had been an event in and of itself. I had been really off balance, the pain in my nose showed up immediately upon entering the store, and an aura had followed. Maybe it influenced my peacock inspired choice.
Normally, I loved Halloween. I hated it that year, only slightly less than I hated the auras.
You’re looking at a woman who had an enormous amount of anxiety, but didn’t know why. She was gravely ill and couldn’t understand it. I was oblivious. I would find out two or three days later about the tumor.
Looking back, I wish I had had some sort of inkling of an idea of how strong I really was capable of being. Had I known then what I would be doing now, how I would be functioning at this point in time, it would have elated me. Following the surgery, I was in ICU for twice as long as I was supposed to be, but I was only in the hospital altogether for six days.
Because I was having trouble with focus once I got home, both mentally and visually, I decided it would be best for me to take up painting some decorative plaster pieces we had gotten the year before. It seemed like it would help, and it did. It also got us through some awkward silences. My daughter, sister and I sat at our dining room table, and I focused, focused in on the work at hand while listening (but barely, to be truthful) to my family interact with one another. They painted with me.
(Seriously, kid? A hunter orange Santa? Really? I think by my harassing her about her unconventional color choice, it reassured her I would be okay. Picking on one another is perfectly acceptable here, even encouraged.)
A couple weeks later was Thanksgiving. My daughter and I made the homemade crescent rolls, as was tradition. My husband and my sister did a chunk of the other stuff for the meal (I can’t really remember at this point who did what.) While I was on a 10 lb lifting restriction, I didn’t lift the turkey into or out of the brine – my husband did that for me and I didn’t protest. But I made the brine and dressed the bird, darn it.
I made it as ‘normal’ for my kid as humanly possible. She has been my greatest motivation in my recovery, in my quest for normalcy, or at least the illusion thereof. Plus, I didn’t want my husband making the turkey.
My husband took me out once a week for our ‘outings’. Getting me back into the throes of being out and about was critical. He always prefaced a trip with something like, ‘If you’re sure you want to go, we’ll head out that way (to whatever store we were going to). If you start getting sick or weak, just say so and we’ll turn around and come home.’ We’d go light grocery shopping, with me white knuckling the cart for dear life, feeling like I would be thrown into the canned goods at any moment. I hadn’t gotten my balance back yet, and the anxiety was most definitely a factor.
I wasn’t concerned about my shaved, scarred, scabbing head for my own sake. Hey, I knew what was going on. But I was concerned about freaking others out or making them uncomfortable. My apologies to any I may have nauseated at this particular point in my life.
We went Christmas shopping together without our daughter for the first time in ages. Multiple times, actually. (Kinda like a date, but with a partially shaved head.) Let me tell you, those trendy teeny bopper stores with the loud music were not made for brain patients. Oy.
Each time I would go into a store without an aura or without me hearing some sort of compressor or loud fan in my ear, I considered it a victory, and these victories went a long way to helping with my recovery. I’ve never had an aura since the surgery, and the churning compressor sound gradually faded over the course of a few months or so.
It took me a very, very long time to wrap the presents, but I did it. I micromanaged everything about the holiday like always, and I was pleased with that. Decorations were downsized considerably, putting up only the Nativity, our daughter’s nutcracker collection, and the tree, but it was enough.
I bundled up, hat and all, to walk the block with my family to watch our lighted Christmas parade here in town. The lights and horns were a bit much, but I nearly cried because I was just so stinkin’ happy to be there, to be alive for it. Normally I would stand, but this time we took a folding chair and it was good.
It was about seven months or so until I made it to about the 70% ‘normal-feeling’ mark. (Depending on what day you ask and how I’m feeling at any particular moment will determine the percentage of ‘healed factor’ you get from me. It varies.) Progress from there has been very, very slow, but…. livable. How I felt in the above picture was absolutely not livable.
Today, for Halloween 2013, it’s raining. Of course this is the year we decided to buy the full size candy bars to hand out and our daughter decided on a non-homemade (read: expensive) costume. I got some stuff on our trip to the Renaissance Festival and will be donned in a peasant shirt, skirt and gypsy coins. My husband’ll be in his go-to costume consisting of ‘black cloak and randomly chosen mask’. We’ll answer the door for the few that brave this weather, and I’ll head on into November with a good dose of apprehension, but also a knowledge of the strength I possess.
Bring on the holidays.
Prism Balance: My Pile of Good Things 