I have
a couple friends who are dealing with some scary medical issues right
now. I worry about them, and make sure to remember them in my prayers
everyday, but more than that I can sympathize. When one of my friends
was talking about having a “Swiss cheese memory,” it forced me to
remember when I went through a very similar ordeal. A couple of years
ago I got extremely sick. The kind of sick where they told the
fireman to call my family kind of sick. One of the things that was
happening was that my hypothalamus (the part of the brain that
controls body temperature) was seriously out of whack from an
infection. I had a fever that was ranging from 104ยบ
to 106°. The brain is very sensitive to
temperature and inter-cranial pressure, and when the balance is upset
the electrical charges (that control everything our bodies do) can
start to misfire. This can result in death, stroke or in my case,
seizures.
When
the fireman and I were talking about my friend the other day, I made
a comment to the effect that I felt bad she was having to cope with
the memory issues, because I could remember when I was dealing with
it, and how stressful it was when I would get a little confused. The
fireman, who remembers my time of “a little confused," slightly
differently, snorted and said, “Honey, I was there. You weren't a
little confused. You went to the land of bat-shit crazy. And when you
got there, they elected you their queen!”
He's
right, of course. I was all sorts of not right. Fortunately I don't
remember calling the district attorney (whom I had a professional,
working relationship with), at home, at 3 in the morning, demanding
that he arrest the vampires who had just assaulted me. That caused them to take my
phone away and when the lab techs came to draw blood they always
alerted the nurses after that. The infection in my leg had caused it
to swell, and it looked like I was trying to smuggle a watermelon in
my calf. I have a mole on the inside of my leg, about two inches
above my ankle. I have had it all my life. I have the vaguest recollection of thinking that
the mole was some type of a plug, and that if I could just get it
out, all the icky would be able to drain out and I would feel fine.
When the nurses found me, I hadn't managed to get the plug out, but I
had managed to dig a giant, bloody hole in my leg that required
stitches to close. They tied my hands to the bed after that.
That
was some of the serious crazy stuff. The less serious, but more
lasting effect from the seizures was the Swiss cheese memory that my
friend had complained about. I lost days and hours at a time. Some
have come back, some are gone forever. I would forget stupid things,
and important things. I remember holding my hair dryer one morning
and bursting into tears because I had no idea how to turn it on. A
couple weeks after getting released from the hospital I drove myself
to a doctor's appointment. I got there fine, and got part of the way
back home, and then some switch flipped in my noggin, and I got lost.
I drove around what I knew had to be close to my house, but I just
couldn't find it. I finally had to call the fireman to come and
rescue me. He did, and I was 3 miles from the house, where I had lived
for years, but I might just as well have been on Mars.
The
worst, and the most lasting for me, was that I would lose my nouns. I
would be talking just like normal, and all of a sudden I wouldn't be
able to find the right word. It's not a “...it's on the tip of my
tongue” kind of feeling, it's like the word was deleted from my
vocabulary. And it was always the nouns. It's actually a recognized
speech disorder, called agrammatic aphasia. It's annoying as hell.
It's gotten better with therapy and time, but it's not gone
completely, and I suspect I will have it, to some degree, for the
rest of my life. Sometimes this leads to very embarrassing
situations.
If
you've known me for any length of time, you know that I occasionally
find myself in situations that could best be described as awkward.
This is the one that takes the cake. This is my most embarrassing
moment. And, that's saying a lot.
There
is a gas station in northern Wisconsin that I can never go back to.
It's a very nice gas station, a full array of all things quick and
convenient, but I'm pretty sure that they have a surveillance tape of
me that they show annually at their Christmas party as the
entertainment portion of the evening.
I
had been driving along, and had a bit of a tickle in my throat. Not a
cough or a sore throat, just an annoyance. So I thought I would stop
and get a soda and some hard candies, butterscotch or peppermint
would be the preferred choice, but really, anything that you would
find in the bottom of an old lady's purse would do. I found my soda
right away, but after wandering every aisle, I could not locate any
acceptable candy. I made my way to the counter, which was staffed
that day by a gentleman of at least 7ts5. He had snazzy rainbow
suspenders holding his black uniform pants up to arm pit level. You know the look. While he rang up my soda he asked if that
was all, and I meant to respond with something like, “I couldn't
find any hard candy, do you have any?” That was not what came out
of my mouth. While the response was being composed in my head, the
sneaky aphasia bandit came and stole me nouns! What actually came out
of my mouth was, “Do you have anything hard? I need something to suck on.”
His
jaw dropped lower than his suspenders! Me, being me, tried to make
it better. Instead I added to the steaming pile of embarrassment by
saying, “I have a tickle in my throat, and I need something to
sooth it.”
So,
to my dear friends who are facing some challenges right now I say
this: It's okay if you feel like you have gone bat-shit crazy. I am
the queen there, and will happily make you one of my ladies in
waiting.