Where do I even begin to start unpacking this round of traumatizing events?
May 9th I began experiencing some of the most scary symptoms in a very long time. I din’t know what was happening or what to do.
I knew this time was much different than the last time and that I had been completely dismissing my symptoms and reducing them to other medical conditions that I have. I was dismissing my headaches and pressure in my head as sinus pressure and sinus headaches. Even though in the back of my mind (pun intended) I knew it was something more than that. This just felt completely different. This was not the same.
In November I dismissed the visual disturbances I was getting as silent migraines. I would get auras in my vision that were different colors and it was changing my field of vision and I couldn’t see because of it. I just thought I was getting silent visual migraines occasionally. I never contributed to the fact that I could be having something going on in my brain…again…
In early April I began to feel so strange. I was feeling like my eyes were popping out of my head and so much pressure in the back of my head that I had shrugged off as sinus pressure yet again. But I didn’t know that I was having a spinal fluid build up in my head. How could I have known this?
I knew it was different this time. I knew that something more was going on here. I knew that it was something that I indeed was suffering from. But… that voice in the back of my mind of my parents or an ex telling me I was being too dramatic. Or a doctor dismissing my symptoms and telling me it wasn’t as bad as it was. Those are the things that I do to myself and it is such an unfair thing to do. I dismissed what I knew to be true about myself due to prior trauma.
And then of course I get into the, “well maybe things wouldn’t have been this bad if I would have said something sooner. How could I have done this to myself?” And that is unfair because how could I have known?
It is such a different feeling when you brush with death. It is such a weird thing to process knowing that you were so close to the end of it all and escaping it. Walking around knowing that you have, essentially, a ticking time bomb in your head and had no idea. The only thing that helps this ticking time bomb is spinal taps to drain the fluid. And those are so excruciating and scary and very hard to cope with. It’s the only thing that prevents that ticking time bomb.
I keep playing this game of dodgeball with death. It is a scary game to play because I haven’t done all that I have planned to do in this life yet. This cannot be the end of my story. It just absolutely cannot be. But how does one cope with this?
I don’t think that I will be able to completely cope until I reach a resolution. And both of those resolutions involve some sort of brain procedure; either a stent or a shunt. Either a major brain surgery or a minimally invasive surgery.
I need this to end soon. I want to heal soon. I want to move forward. I feel like I am stuck in time. I need to this to end so I can begin coping. So I can begin living.
But how do you cope from this? How does one cope with this?
