Two Years

Today is the 2nd anniversary of the brain bleed that nearly wiped me out.

In my lifetime, I rarely paid attention to ‘anniversaries’. I don’t track births/deaths like my mother did. She knew the birthday of every family member, remembered to go to the cemetery to put flowers on headstones. I never did. These days I barely remember my own birthday, and usually only because it is so close to the birthdays of Canada (the 1st) and the US (the 4th) and it’s hard to ignore my own on the 9th. So I used to wrap my birthday in with the other two and offer a ‘sale’ on my online stuff.

Well, that went out the window 18 months ago.

But back to today.

I’ve told the story before but a brief recap for new readers…

I went to an appointment, tripped on a curb and did a face plant. It wasn’t ‘serious’ – a bit of road rash on my cheek and a bit shook up. But a couple saw me go down like a tree felled in the forest, rushed over to dust me off and walk me to my appointment, then an employee walked me back to my vehicle when I was done and I came home. I had a snack and started feeling really really tired, so I went for a nap.

Later Doug heard ‘funny’ noises coming from the bedroom and came to check on me, finding me comatose, clammy and vomiting in my ‘sleep’. He phoned 911, the ambulance came along with the fire fighters, who helped get me out of my bedroom onto a gurney and off to emergency I went.

Long story short, I woke up the next morning after being medivacked to Vancouver for emergency surgery for a brain bleed.

After that, it was a bizarre experience.

In the past, I came really close to dying, several times, but always got saved (thank you universal health care), had some injuries that negatively impacted me, but had always been able to stay focused on recovery and work my ass off (if you pardon the expression) and keep working towards recovery.

This time? This time it seemed I had had one too many injuries, one too many traumas, one too many challenges.

Over the course of the last two years I have struggled. Really struggled. One of the things that kept me going was weaving. It has always been a ‘therapy’ for me, in ways that some people will never understand. They don’t have to. But getting to the loom was the goal, and I was motivated.

Here’s the kicker. I am no longer in my 30s, 40s or 50s…I am in my 70s. And my body has been rode hard and put away wet, too many times.

The neurosurgeon told me that the majority of my recovery from the bleed would be done in the first two years. But he wasn’t talking about the rest of the damage in my body, all of which came to be made worse by the brain injury.

I have, previously, been able to ‘accept’ and re-group, re-tool, move on. This time? I seem stuck, partly because I cannot seem to get beyond the breadth and depth of the damage that has accumulated in my body.

It became clear to me that I am truly in my ‘end of life’ years. The final exit may not arrive for a while, yet, but I am compromised in what I can do, physically, and I had to *accept* that and deal with that reality.

This summer I updated my will and enduring power of attorney. I still have the end of life ‘wishes’ to deal with, which means facing the reality of my studio. Which I still use as therapy, and which then, becomes fraught with emotion and I hit a roadblock. But, little by little, I have been dealing with bits and pieces. Because I’m not actually ‘done’ yet.

Have I ‘given up’? No. I still try to get to the loom twice a day for a total of 60 minutes. My physiotherapist informed me that her goal was to get me up to 180 minutes of aerobic activity a week. I looked at her and said that I usually do 60 minutes a day. Her jaw literally dropped. Finally she said ‘but it has to be aerobic’. I looked her in the eye and said the way I weave it is aerobic. Light, nowadays, but I still break a sweat.

So I try to weave. Honestly? I rarely manage 7 days a week, like I used to do, but I more than hit the 180 minutes a week. But I also know I need to keep doing that because weaving is not just physical ‘exercise’ but mental health. Weaving has always been a working meditation for me.

Over the course of the winter I fell into a deep funk, managed to claw myself out of that, sought more help from more health professionals, have found some things that help, and continue to work on trying to repair the damage to my body. Some of it is not repairable. But I’m working on the living with pain reality.

My brain seems to have made a decent recovery, although I’m not nearly back to whatever ‘normal’ meant two years and one day ago. However, the reading I have done on neuroplasticity leads me to believe that I *can* continue to improve my brain function.

And so I decided to offer the seminars. Am I confident I can do them? Yes. And no. But most people tell me that if I hadn’t told them I had a brain injury, they would never have known. And even then, it’s not at all obvious.

I had the Power Point slide decks, already written. And I decided that I could offer them. Since I was ‘producing’ them, I could chose a time of day when my brain was at it’s ‘best’ (whatever that means, day by day) and of course I can still write, so if I don’t have the words to say, hopefully I can find the words to write.

This morning someone posted information on Terry Fox with a song written by Bryan Adams. And as I watched the video and listened to the song, I was reminded of Rick Hansen. David Foster wrote a song for Rick Hansen. So, two Canadian musicians, writing songs for two men who became friends at the George Strong Rehab facility, one a cancer survivor, one paralyzed from a car accident. Both young men, both athletes, both dealing with ‘broken’ bodies. Both of whom went on to do ‘hard’ things.

Terry Fox decided that cancer needed to be beaten, decided the way he could do something about it was to run a marathon across Canada and try to raise funds for cancer research. No one told him to do that. He decided on his own. His family and friends got behind him and supported him. Then when he collapsed on the road, halfway across the country, they helped him arrange the rest of his all too short life, and once he was gone, the family started the Terry Fox Run and every year since then, people sign up to run a ‘marathon’ and raise money for cancer research.

Rick Hansen watched his friend die, and took the same lesson. Terry didn’t want others to go through what he had gone through, and decided to try to help others so they didn’t have to. Rick decided that people who sustained physical injuries needed not just financial support but that the rest of the population needed to have more awareness of physical damage, so he decided he would wheel around the world, raising awareness of disability. Just because he had had to struggle, made him want to help ease the limitations and challenges that others with paralysis would have to navigate.

He continues to advocate for physical disabled in Canada and across the globe. The Terry Fox Foundation continues to raise money for cancer research.

I don’t think either thought of themselves as ‘heroes’. They saw a need. Decided a way they could do something about it. And did the best they could to make it happen.

I do not clump myself in with those two Canadians except for this: I know weaving. I can help others. I can hopefully steer them in the direction of solutions to the problems they might run into.

Do I have all of the answers? No, not at all. But I can help. And if I can’t help, I can, at least, try.

Tomorrow I begin year 3 of my 9th life.

Onwards…