Thirteen Month Cranioversary

My surprise craniotomy was a year and a month ago today. I have no special reflections or thoughts on that; our lives are once again filled primarily with the dailyness of existence, which is a fine thing indeed. At that level of granularity, life is good, and the pleasures outweigh the frustrations.

My scalp still has areas of strange sensations, balancing activities with available energy/coping with fatigue are still issues, and my right arm/shoulder are still not right. Some cognitive effects are still visible in terms of little gaps here and there, memory problems, and the strange sequencing of what I can do when: right now, sudoku is off and reading is on. I continue to feel lucky, and work to focus on the things that are most important: my children still have a mother, I can still work and maintain a broad range of projects, I have work that is flexible enough to accommodate my limitations and play to my strengths, there are pretty good ways to compensate for my shortcomings.

I saw a little girl on an airplane the other day who, while she didn’t resemble in the slightest either of our girls as a child, brought back memories of that lovely time of our lives as parents. She was interested in all around her, at that stage where she is sounding out letters and working to decode words, and had that air of wonder that happy children do... At the time, seeing her stimulated a train of thought and connections that, in my fatigue today, are lost. I hope the connections are lost only temporarily, as they were interesting and seemed at the time to hold the key to something I’ve been wondering about. Time will tell if the insight will return. It may take a while, as today has more obligations on campus and so the needed rest may not come for a while yet.

After I spent most of the week reading, we watched this week’s NCIS episode on line last night, as well as trying out NCIS LA (yuck). My dreams are completely different at night after reading (or working) in the evening than they are after watching video before we go to bed. It makes sense and I’m feeling a little slow only to be noticing that now. Later in the weekend, when there’s some time, I hope to chat with Dr. Google about this, to see what effects are known and understood. I wonder how much that explains some of the unusual character of the last few months’ dreams? It cannot be a full explanation, as I reconstruct our activities, but I’m now interested in exploring this topic a bit.

Need to run: ethics events all morning. The view out my window is the very best of autumn in Illinois. The leaves are changing and the colors are beautiful in the morning sunshine. Enjoy October, wherever you are.