Category: Family

Planning

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Planning…I’m not doing much of it right now. I don’t feel I can safely plan a trip anywhere. I have a thought about some place I’d like to go, but then it’s quickly dismissed due to not knowing how traveling will effect me.

Dave and I love Disney. We have made two trips there and I’m pretty sure we’d both love to go again. I know I couldn’t do the trip right now. But what about a year from now? Could I even safely begin to plan something like that? No. I don’t think so. And even if we did plan a trip a year or so down the road, how do I know that once we get there, I couldn’t stand in line that long. Can I ride my favorite rides? Can I sit in an enclosed space with hundred of other people? Can I even get on a plane? Right now…..I’d say “no”….and that’s sad.

We’d love to go to Scotland and right now that size of a trip is so daunting, I’d say it’ll never happen….and that’s sad.

Even a trip back to NY to visit my family is a daunting prospect. Could I handle the 11 hour drive in car? Right now….I’d have to say “no”. And even if I could endure the ride, I’d probably be so totally exhausted by the time we got there, I’d be a useless visitor and have to sit and rest so much it wouldn’t be fun for me, or my family. And that’s sad.

Dave and I haven’t even gone out to a restaurant to eat. Mostly due to my not knowing if I could do it and not feel horrible. I’d hate to make a reservation, only to get there, have the lights in the restaurant, or the colors, or the people and sounds bother my head and eyes that we’d have to leave. I don’t want to ruin my own time, as well as someone else’s. I feel like I’m not only holding myself back from enjoying life again,
but that I’m holding Dave back and I hate that.

I kind of know what my mother went through as she was trying to adjust to life with Crohn’s disease. She wouldn’t go out or travel because she never knew when an attack would strike and didn’t want to embarrass herself and ruin other people’s time. I completely understand that now. BUT, she was able to get her diet and health regulated so she can go out now and is enjoying her life at 80. I suppose I should take a cue from her and just learn to live my life again.

Starting with a long day-trip somewhere, then work our way up to an over-nighter and then maybe an out-of-state trip, might be the way to go, but I won’t know until I try it. Driving to work was a big step and it took me awhile to work my way up to where I felt confident I could do it.

I know I won’t know until I start DOING these things, but it’s scary when you DO know you can’t do some of those things and plan for them and may not be able to for a long time yet.

That’s my sob story for today. Boo, hoo.

The Frustration with the Frustration

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It has now come to my being frustrated…because I’m frustrated! Yikes!

I get frustrated when I can’t just up and do something that I used to be able to do….like get in the car and go to the grocery store. I don’t like HAVING to rely on people do so much for me, especially when I CAN do other things, but not some still. Stores are still the biggy for me. So it’s double frustrating.

I feel guilty asking for something. I feel like I’m a burden sometimes. I know I AM, but I don’t like feeling that way. But I can’t help it sometimes…I have to be. I don’t like it anymore than they do. I just can’t do the big stores yet. I know I can’t when the smaller stores still bother me.

I could only un-decorate HALF the Christmas tree and Dave ended up  having to take down literally everything else. I felt so horrible, just sitting up was a struggle. I hate to have him do that and wish I could have done more. I may have been able to, but much later in the day and even then, not sure how much.

It’s frustrating being frustrated!

Migraines

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As we were getting ready for dinner, I had a migraine. It had all the classic symptoms with my eyes “going” as I call
it, so I immediately took two Excedrin Migraine pills with some water and bread to keep it down and then the pain hit. And it lasted for eight hours.

Granted, if I HADN’T taken those pills, I would have been horribly sick to my stomach and in worse pain for a longer
period of time, but this wasn’t great just the same. It was tolerable. I got up and ate a bowl of the spaghetti that Dave had cooked up for dinner about two hours later and then went right back to bed.

Thankfully the pain was gone on Monday morning, but I had the hit by a train feeling that my family continues to compare it to after a migraine.

Both my sisters, aunt and mother have migraines. Apparently, once you hit menopause they go away…at least in our
family. I hope that’s the case with me!

Although I haven’t been able to read any conclusive evidence that aneurysm sufferers also have migraines, I couldn’t
help but think that some of the head pain I was just experiencing with this one was added on to because of the aneurysm. I think people who have aneurysms don’t and do have migraines, so I haven’t read a direct connection. I hope so,
for may family’s’ sake.

Of course because the Excedrin has caffeine and Aspirin in it, I was wide awake the entire time, which then leads me to think in bed…and that’s never good! LOL I think about my time in the hospital and the pain I endured there and what IF this isn’t a migraine and another aneurysm developing…it all comes to light when the might starts playing tricks on you under the influence of drugs. I hate that.

Second Day of Work

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I promise I won’t bore anyone who might be reading this with a daily account of each day I go into work, but the second
day went better than the first.

I felt better and more comfortable there this time and still only worked about 5 hours. I don’t want to push it. I
have a headache tonight, but nothing as bad as it was Tuesday night. Dave dropped me off and picked me up again.

A few people have started to ask me some more pointed questions about what happened. I think most people don’t understand it or know what an aneurysm really is. I know I didn’t know that much before I had one.

I’m still VERY tired though. Yawning a lot and my eye lids are extremely heavy. I tried a few times to just sit and
close my eye at my desk. Right now my eyes are bothering me the most at work. Getting used to “new” surroundings again and new lighting, a different monitor from home. It’s all different.

It feels good to be useful and needed again though and to have a little bit of my independence back.

Today is the 4 month anniversary (or annieversary
as they say on the Brain Community message board.) of the rupture. I’m doing pretty good considering what COULD have happened. I have to keep reminding myself of that when I get frustrated. I survived.