Going Down the Road

It was a year plus after AVM removal surgery and slowly things were starting to return to normal for me. I was back
at work and trying to do the job that I used to do so
easily and I had just received my driver's license back.

I was driving back home after work and began to
have all these feelings, and I will try to describe them.
It was like I was overwhelmed returning to my life
so enexpectedly. Once again I was driving down that old familiar road as if I was any average citizen. What happened to the man I used to be who collapsed to the floor with a cerebral bleed big enough to make him think that he was dying? The man who lost his driver's license because he was too ill to ask for another one? Who could not walk a step or talk a complete sentence?

It was overwhelming, but I had no choice, I was back
and I had to continue to regain my life back inch by
inch. When I was finally there I would not worry
about those overwhelming feelings, but I would feel
like that average man who had just returned from a
long dangerous, but somehow victorious journey.

It seemed that the journey that had come so close to breaking me had made me.

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Hi John, thanks for another stellar blog and I especially enjoyed the final sentence. Recently, I read another AVM survivor posting where she felt gratitude for her AVM and the person she had become; I understand that conclusion for I have said that I am the person that I wanted to be. I wanted to be caring, sweet and considerate and I feel that I have those qualities. Now if I could win a million $ ... lol.

I can believe that, Susan, and I am happy for those of us who also
came out OK. But when I think of those who were broken by the journey
then I wonder why did some of us come out of it so well and some of us
did not? Is there a reason for all this? I may not know what the reason
is, but I think that there is a reason for it all.