Moving Forward
Well, having graduated from radation therapy, the only thing left on the plate is neuro-rehab. Without complaining, what I will say about that process is that it hasn’t met my expectations. Apart from an initial neuro-psych evaluation, I’ve only met with one other doctor at the barrow clinic. The report I got back from the evaluation initially was 3 weeks after I had surgery and naturally there were some deficiencies. Imagine someone messing with something you think with, and then be asked to use it in all sorts of strange new ways. It’s just not possible to get a perfect score unless you have some sort of superbrain. In a nutshell, the report said I was fine in my general knowledge and other areas requiring mental abilities that were attributed to parts of my brain that were NOT operated on. However, the parts that were have been slowly healing up and rewiring themselves with or without doctor visits. I’m not sure how important that is right now.What IS important is that I’m finished with the MEDICAL part of my treatment, save it be for a few follow up appointments with the staff that performed the procedures and have been monitoring me already. I’m just waiting for the CLINICAL procedures to catch up. In the meantime, my personality in terms of who I was before my operation and what I was doing or capable of doing is s-l-o-w-l-y starting to re-emerge.
But, I am back at work half-time, which I’m grateful for, I’ve been able to meet the demands of my job (albeit, I picked a slow time of year to return), and I’m enjoying having some productive things to do that I enjoy doing. Plus I’m applying my daily doses of rogaine, so we’ll see where that leads. Trust me. I need it. There’s one thing to be said about bad haircuts. Getting one by mistake is one thing, but getting one out of necessity or unavoidability is something else. I’m not sure which is worse, but my head looks like I had a really accurate bad haircut. I’m almost afraid to go to my barber out of fear of scaring the other customers away.
Spending time with family and friends has been great too. I’ve been counting the blessings lately, and know I can do better as a friend in some areas. It’s always good to have goals. One mine now is to put together a reflection of my "before time", and compare it with how I’m feeling now. I think I’ll get started on that soon…
May 5th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Every time you crack a joke it registers that much more for me that things are getting back to normal. Keep healing…