Hello, it's me again...Margaret
I'm BAAA-AAACK!!!
And this time I'm typing from home. I will, more than likely, write about my experience at UCLA Medical Center one day soon but right now I'm bored with that and I would rather talk about MEEEE!!!
I'm officially a crazy old lady so my lifelong dream of becoming old enough to do silly stuff and be considered cute instead of nuts has finally come true. The nursing staff told my daughter that I was "pleasantly confused". I guess that's a nice way of saying "nutty as a fruit cake". When I first came around after the stroke, I was frightened by everything because I didn't recognize any of it.
But, after a while I realized that I was in a hospital so I sort of just assumed that the aliens were nice aliens and I decided to go along with the program. Since I'm pretty much just following the fates into a confused state that seems seems to be calling me closer and closer, I have no idea what type of blog posts people will be finding when they come here in the future. I suppose it'll be as though I'm Charly from Flowers for Algernon and no one will know if tomorrow holds a witty Irish chick, a dithering idiot or some combination of the two.
And as batty as I may become, I will STILL make more sense than a hospital that has "Neuro-psychiatric Center" on the front door, "Stroke Unit" on the door to the wing, my NAME on the door to my room AND a promise of confidentiality. I don't get that at all but maybe it's me so I'll just leave it alone until I have more to offer the entire botheration than my verbal wrath.
Confusion is feared by most people but once you adjust, it's actually rather interesting. The smallest stuff has been fascinating me, like the thing in the bed that looks like a phone, has voices coming out of one side and lots of buttons but you can't call anyone with it except the nurse.
Oh, and forgetting a few months of your life is exactly like time travel. If you don't remember what happened since you went to bed on your last birthday which was several months ago, you have, for all intents and purposes, travelled into the future. It's not something you'd welcome arbitrarily into your life...but it IS time travel nonetheless. Actually, it was space travel as well, after all, it was June and I was in Atlanta...now I'm in Los Angeles and I don't remember how I got here although once I was told that I took a plane, I DID remember that my dog had flown with me.
I guess it'll all clear up eventually...it did after the first stroke. I was right smack dab in the middle of singing The Happy Birthday Song to my niece when I suddenly forgot the words to the song. Or, I would need a cup and know what a cup looked like but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what the heck one was called. Words would elude me and like the trips through space and time, you never see it coming. Who would foresee such a curse? No one expects to forget words that you use every single day of your life. Think about the repercussions of that...you could be in rush to order french fries, to get to an appointment or to have an orgasm and suddenly you might forget the word "faster".
But it's not all bad, actually there are several other positive things about confusion that are underrated my most people:
1. Lack of responsibilities like driving, babysitting and chopping vegetables.
2. Automatic approval for most government health plans.
3. Appreciation for the phrase, "Once an adult, twice a child."
4. This is the time in life that you are allowed to fart nilly-willy and not see quite as many aghast faces.
5. If caught loitering, committing vagrancy or trespassing, you'll avoid jail and go straight to the nearest hospital.
6. As soon as you GET to the hospital, they'll give you the good drugs.
7. Confused people have absolutely NO interest it smoking, doing drugs or drinking. They exist in a permanent altered state of consciousness. Confusion is one helluva trip dudes!
8. After you spend some time staring at the idiot box, you realize that swings and long walks are much more fun.
9. Of course...if you walk long enough, you get a ride home from the sheriff's department. If you're lucky, you could even get a ride back in a helicopter!
10. You fully appreciate John Lennon while NOT under the influence of pot.
Imagine.
Well, I'm sure there are more but one of the bad things abut this entire sordid debacle is the fact that I can't type anymore. Well, I can but it would probably be quicker to use a pen. This has taken me a LONG FRICKING TIME and I feel like assisting gravity in her efforts to keep the sofa on the floor. See ya!
:)
And this time I'm typing from home. I will, more than likely, write about my experience at UCLA Medical Center one day soon but right now I'm bored with that and I would rather talk about MEEEE!!!
I'm officially a crazy old lady so my lifelong dream of becoming old enough to do silly stuff and be considered cute instead of nuts has finally come true. The nursing staff told my daughter that I was "pleasantly confused". I guess that's a nice way of saying "nutty as a fruit cake". When I first came around after the stroke, I was frightened by everything because I didn't recognize any of it.
But, after a while I realized that I was in a hospital so I sort of just assumed that the aliens were nice aliens and I decided to go along with the program. Since I'm pretty much just following the fates into a confused state that seems seems to be calling me closer and closer, I have no idea what type of blog posts people will be finding when they come here in the future. I suppose it'll be as though I'm Charly from Flowers for Algernon and no one will know if tomorrow holds a witty Irish chick, a dithering idiot or some combination of the two.
And as batty as I may become, I will STILL make more sense than a hospital that has "Neuro-psychiatric Center" on the front door, "Stroke Unit" on the door to the wing, my NAME on the door to my room AND a promise of confidentiality. I don't get that at all but maybe it's me so I'll just leave it alone until I have more to offer the entire botheration than my verbal wrath.
Confusion is feared by most people but once you adjust, it's actually rather interesting. The smallest stuff has been fascinating me, like the thing in the bed that looks like a phone, has voices coming out of one side and lots of buttons but you can't call anyone with it except the nurse.
Oh, and forgetting a few months of your life is exactly like time travel. If you don't remember what happened since you went to bed on your last birthday which was several months ago, you have, for all intents and purposes, travelled into the future. It's not something you'd welcome arbitrarily into your life...but it IS time travel nonetheless. Actually, it was space travel as well, after all, it was June and I was in Atlanta...now I'm in Los Angeles and I don't remember how I got here although once I was told that I took a plane, I DID remember that my dog had flown with me.
I guess it'll all clear up eventually...it did after the first stroke. I was right smack dab in the middle of singing The Happy Birthday Song to my niece when I suddenly forgot the words to the song. Or, I would need a cup and know what a cup looked like but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what the heck one was called. Words would elude me and like the trips through space and time, you never see it coming. Who would foresee such a curse? No one expects to forget words that you use every single day of your life. Think about the repercussions of that...you could be in rush to order french fries, to get to an appointment or to have an orgasm and suddenly you might forget the word "faster".
But it's not all bad, actually there are several other positive things about confusion that are underrated my most people:
1. Lack of responsibilities like driving, babysitting and chopping vegetables.
2. Automatic approval for most government health plans.
3. Appreciation for the phrase, "Once an adult, twice a child."
4. This is the time in life that you are allowed to fart nilly-willy and not see quite as many aghast faces.
5. If caught loitering, committing vagrancy or trespassing, you'll avoid jail and go straight to the nearest hospital.
6. As soon as you GET to the hospital, they'll give you the good drugs.
7. Confused people have absolutely NO interest it smoking, doing drugs or drinking. They exist in a permanent altered state of consciousness. Confusion is one helluva trip dudes!
8. After you spend some time staring at the idiot box, you realize that swings and long walks are much more fun.
9. Of course...if you walk long enough, you get a ride home from the sheriff's department. If you're lucky, you could even get a ride back in a helicopter!
10. You fully appreciate John Lennon while NOT under the influence of pot.
Imagine.
Well, I'm sure there are more but one of the bad things abut this entire sordid debacle is the fact that I can't type anymore. Well, I can but it would probably be quicker to use a pen. This has taken me a LONG FRICKING TIME and I feel like assisting gravity in her efforts to keep the sofa on the floor. See ya!
:)
posted by Meg Kelso | 11:53 PM
4 Comments:
Meg, like the saying goes "The more things change, the more they stay the same". I am guessing things will go on as before!!! Now you'll have a greater appreciation of what President Obama is trying to achieve with the new health care plans for people like yourself who are in need of and would otherwise not have the chance of health care.
You sound just like a friend I have in the UK.....one day you must bare it all...lol...
Happy Recovery...enjoy the ride!
Best of luck Meg. I'm rooting for you.
Kyle from Knoxville
OK, I know this happened a while back, Meg. But I'm witchya in this little 'time-traveled' comment. (If you haven't disabled comments-on-old-posts.)
Ain't strokes a whole bunch of fun? It's like ending up with a brain of swiss cheese only you don't know where the holes are until you run right into them-and people are staring at you like you've lost your mind as you mime what you're trying to say. Truthfully yes, some of it's lost and we have the medical records/scans to prove it. And it's every day, ordinary stuff-nothing bizarre, esoteric or of such utility they could hit the brain-trashcan and never be missed.
Post-strike #1 I was bullied back to work by an MD who didn't believe me when I told him I wasn't feeling quite....right. I had enough vacation time/sick time galore to last me well into the next century. As in I NEVER called in sick, took enough vacation to say so and inevitably lost my "Use or Loose" time (which has a gyno pun imbedded there, but let's not digress too far.) However, ever since I was trained to respect authority figures I did once again allow a bully-in-a-white-coat shame me into thinking I was milking my "Cerebral Incident" into an acceptable "excuse" to not return to work. Despite the fact this same idiot sent me to a major medical center for an ERCP with another of his ilk who apparently decided to perform surgery without anesthesia resulting in mechanical pancreatitis within 5 min. after being the last person to exit the "Outpatient SURGERY" at 5 PM and advised to "Find a hotel room-I'd like to see you tomorrow." (Note: I lived 120 mi. away from this medical center.) I'll leave the ensuing nightmare out and continue with my point if I can remember it.......
OK. Swiss-Cheese Brain has navigated THAT "black hole" of grey matter.
I returned to work where my profession requires me to talk/speak to people-A LOT. About important stuff called their lives. Driving home from work one day I was replaying a conversation with a colleague from earlier in the day that made NO sense at all. Brain damaged people who know they're brain damaged do a lot of this stuff because you just don't have the same confidence that "all is well inside the skull" post stroke. Suddenly the problem with the earlier convo became crystal clear: I said out loud to the vacant car I was driving (no, I don't count when I'm just there in body) "That was a teleological argument-yes, TW your colleague is MORE brain damaged than you!"
This 'teleological' word popped up somewhere from the deep recesses post stroke of black-holeism. This from a woman who could NOT, even under pain of torture, death and dismemberment remember what to call those thingys in the kitchen that have cabinets above/below, are found in about every habitable "home" in the known universe of planet earth, often abut OTHER kitchen thingys like the fridge, the stove/oven, are sometimes found in the middle of the kitchen on top of an "island" and remained fully entrenched in "black holism"/swiss cheese for brains aka MINE.
The term in case you haven't figured it out from all the above hints? "Kitchen Counter." Thass right. That term STILL evades me periodically but once I caught on to how to improve my mimes, dendrites reached around the hole and mated from a distance across a synaptic membrane to re-install such daily and useful terms as "Kitchen Counter."
I'm witchya, Meg!
TW
I forgot the words to the Happy Birthday-song. It was wild.
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