Almost exactly 14 years ago, I was rushed into emergency surgery to relieve swelling on the brain caused by the accident. I'm told the surgery took hours and even days afterward, doctors couldn't give the family any real good news because they didn't think I would recover. The doctors also believed that even if I did manage to come out of the coma, I would have significant brain damage. Stubbornness being a family trait, no one believed that I was going to die, or that I was going to be a vegetable. When I woke up two weeks later, I was confused as all hell and assumed the feeling would subside. But it quickly became obvious I'd undergone some major personality changes and had significant memory loss. The year that followed that accident was the most difficult year of my life. I had to deal with the loss of one of the closest people to me, the near loss of two others and, in some ways, the loss of myself, or at least who I used to be. I had to learn how to walk and endure countless other surgeries to correct this or that. And it hasn't gotten any easier in the years since; the anemia, the cancer scares, the great MS and Alzheimer's watches of 2016. That event was a line drawn in permanent marker, dividing who I was from birth to age 21 and who I've become from 21 to almost 35. In another five years, I'll have lived half my life as who I used to be and half my life with the current me, and that's trippy to think about. However selfish it may sound, I've always considered myself somewhat lucky that I was in the hospital bed and not one of those in the waiting room during the accident mess. I didn't have to worry, I didn't have to sit there day after day and wonder if it was my last breath or if I'd come out of surgery. I had the easy part of just lying there unconscious. It sounds odd, but there's some sort of comfort in the fact that I didn't have to endure the emotional wreckage (not until years later, anyway).
A friend of someone fairly close to me had been having awful headaches for a couple of weeks. They assumed it was a sinus problem and took meds to try and ward off whatever the problem was, but the headaches got worse and to the point where they were absolutely leveled every time a headache came on. Finally deciding a visit to the doctor was in order, they got a CT and were shocked to learn the cause of the headaches was a tumor the size of a golf ball, pressing against the brain. After confirming the presence of the tumor, surgery was scheduled for next week to remove it and make sure that it's benign. The pictures of it are really quite amazing, and this is coming from someone who views CT's and MRI's on a semi-regular basis. But I've never seen anything like that. I can't imagine knowing beforehand that they're going to cut your head open and poke around up in there. It's not like I had a choice when it happened to me. I don't know how I'd do sitting with the knowledge of that, not to mention the actual tumor on the brain, for the better part of a week. I'd probably be a bit of a mess, so I give major props to this person for handling it the way they have. I certainly couldn't do it.
Understandably, the mutual friend my soon-to-be brain buddy and I share has been seriously thrown by the news. She came into my life years after my accident and often marveled at how I came through it all. She used to run her hand across the scar on my head and say she didn't think she'd be able to handle any of it; being in the situation herself or being a loved one in the waiting room. I told her I hoped she'd never have to deal with anything like that. But here we are. Still, she recognizes that situation could've been far worse, her friend could've put off going to the doctor a lot longer and ended up in really dire straits. That would've been awful. Thank Fonz it was caught early and here's hoping the recovery will be complete (though it won't be easy because brain surgery, ya'll).
