Your Brain is Pretty Cool or "How many 3's are in help?"

This quite possibly be the funniest and greatest unintentionally well timed gifts I have ever received. For those of you who are scratching your heads, this is what children in Chinese public schools learn instead of the Recorder. It is a mouth powered piano and it's crazy. Thank you so much, Darcie and Andrew. It came on a day where it was good to have a laugh. I love it.

This past week I've been experiencing some weird things. I firmly believe there is a good side and a bad side to everything. This is a helpful world view to have when you have a week like I've had and it seems like life has given you quite a few "bads" all at once.

The first indication I had anything wrong with my brain came after I went to the gym with my husband. I wasn't enthusiastic about going (I did feel smug that we were going before the New Years Resolutioners showed up) but it was totally uneventful. I ran the track (which I have fallen back in love with as of late because it is one of the few places where I let myself wear headphones and just experience music and check out on autopilot) After we finished. I went to the locker room to grab my stuff, I found my locker and TOTALLY drew a blank on how to open my combination lock. No clue. Couldn't visualize the operating mechanism at all. I knew what it was, I knew it was mine, I remembered opening it effortlessly a hundred times. I just could not for the life of me picture how to do it. I knew it had something to do with numbers though.

This is the cool part. Somehow my brain remembered all the steps to drag my fingers across numbers on my phone to get it unlocked. Totally auto pilot. I was realizing I was baffled with letters, numbers and symbols. I started texting my husband, thinking he would think this was totally reasonable stuff I needed help with because it didn't occur to me that this was super wrong. 

Actual texts I managed to send. Yes, my husband is listed in my phone as Super King. Long story, he's pretty adorable.

As I started to type, I realized that I couldn't really picture what words were supposed to look like. I knew what letter the word started with and I realized that auto correct suggestions either looked right or wrong, even though I couldn't figure out what made them right or wrong. 

I was so stumped on how to type "Help" in my mind I was looking for an auto correct suggestion that resembled "h333lp" and it didn't give it to me, so I guessed on that one. Not going to lie, it still looks a little bit right to me.

I got frustrated at that point and left the change room to find my husband. It was good that I did that, because my seizure hit right after I found him. Of course I don't remember that part. I just remember waking up and having firemen standing over me for some reason asking me really pesky questions about the date that I was not sure the answers on. 

<insert long winded story about going to ER in the ambulance and CT scans and sad news about brain tumors that I don't feel like talking about at the moment> 

In the past week+ I have good days and bad days (right now my brain is working okay, so I'm taking advantage of that) I've read somewhere that having a seizure can reset your senses. I'm not sure if it was that or starting my anti seizure medication or the fact that my brain tumor (who my niece has named Sally) has made it's presence known, but I have have noticed some neat things. 

On my bad days, the word thing is there but not as bad as that pre-seizure episode in the sense that I don't confuse numbers and letters. I do miss words in sentences and I can tell when something is spelled incorrectly - I'm just not totally sure what the issue is (so I'm constantly auto correcting) I find its similar but different with reading. I'm missing words on large chunks of text (so some of those lovely messages you've sent me I've had to puzzle over a bit) I had a discovery last night that if I read it out loud, it makes perfect sense. 

This is what I'm leading up to here on why your brain is so cool. Something goes wrong and there are 10 work arounds that your brain is TOTALLY okay with trying out in order to gain understanding. Can't read the letter E? No problem, 3 will do in a pinch. Reading taking you forever? No problem, some innate sense of where buttons exist spatially on your phone swiped in a certain pattern will suffice. Having trouble with handwriting? Try typing on your keyboard because you played Typing Tutor obsessively as a child and Home Row is drilled very, very deeply into your subconscious mind and will not fail you now. 

Other cool and random things I've noticed: 

- The first few days post seizure, my sense of smell picked up the most amazing and beautiful scents. I suspect this is what your sense of smell will be like in heaven. One of my Christmas gifts was a diffuser for aromatherapy oils (yes, yes, 5 years after everyone else wanted one, LOL) This thing has at times, smelled so beautiful and perfect it has actually brought me to tears. This has faded quite a bit the past few days, but on occasion, it still strikes. I love this. (Weird side note, my husband and kids smell so good. Having friends pop by... they all smell like themselves and that is so great. I promise I won't be awkward when I see you next though) 

- I have had a RAGING sweet tooth. I think this one is to be blamed on the meds. My appetite has sucked and for the first few days, the only food I could picture in my head was Dole fruit salad and gluten free donuts. Then we went to Superstore and I found out that Dole makes mango chunks in mango pudding and I pretty much lost my mind. I am not a sweets person generally, but the past week I have gained an appreciation on why people love this kind of stuff. My youngest kid thinks this has been an awesome development. 

- Sometimes my feet feel a little farther away than they usually do (I have no idea why) yet my balance and nerve endings are all working perfectly. I suspect this might be what teenagers experience when they grow lots over night. 

Anyways, I'm sure there will be new and interesting things to keep me engaged in the coming weeks. One thing I have realized is I can't always remember all the steps I need to take on stuff I take for granted. One of those is replying as me to all the direct comments under a blog post. I've read them, I just don't have the visual steps I need to take. As some of you have noticed, I will answer you right away on Facebook or via email but your comment on this page is unanswered. The blog is stumping me - sorry, LOL. 

​​To read the whole story of my Meningioma click here.