Partly because it’s not politically correct to ask a person about his or her medical history, and partly because it’s self-centered to raise the topic unsolicited, I rarely talk about the effect that two brain hemorrhages and three brain surgeries have had on my life. But, that doesn’t mean that I’m ashamed of the illness or that it’s painful to recall. In fact, I’m proud of what I’ve overcome, and I treasure the affect that it’s had on my life.
The first thing I can recall after the onset of my first hemorrhage was in the late morning of November 13, 1995. A nurse was hovering over my hospital bed. My wife Andrea stood to my left. The nurse asked me a series of absurdly simple questions: “Where are you?”, “What day is it?”, and “Where do you live?” I got the answers right. Andrea congratulated me enthusiastically. That angered me at first; it seemed horribly patronizing. But, my attitude started to change when I realized that she had been at my side for more than two days, and nurses had asked those questions repeatedly.
“That’s the first time you got it right,” she said, with the combination of joy and sorrow that I’ve seen in people who have crossed the finish line of a marathon for the first time. And, when she said that, my anger turned to passion. I now recall this moment often, holding it like a prized and indestructible possession. I covet that she cared, that anyone cared, enough about me to want me back, not just in body, but also in spirit.
A day later, my two boys (ages five and two at the time) came to visit. The emotional impact of those events has shaped the way that I’ve reacted to things that have happened in my life ever since.
In early 1998, when I suffered a second hemorrhage caused by a separate, undetected AVM, I was determined to do whatever it took to recover, and to thrive. I sought therapy to help improve my memory, and I started practicing things that helped me overcome my minor deficiencies. I carefully examined my position when I got out of my car so that I could find it when I returned. I carefully added every appointment to a calendar so that I wouldn’t forget where I was supposed to be.
I suffered a brief depression. A therapist helped me understand that my sadness was rooted in the guilt that I felt for having repeatedly subjected my wife and children to the fear that I would die. I quit drinking. When my wife got an opportunity to transfer to California, I took several months off to travel across the country with my kids and spend more time with them when we arrived. I quit smoking. I started to improve my physical condition, first by mountain biking, then by running, then by doing triathlons.
Athletics had a profoundly positive impact on my life. But, I discovered that I’m epileptic. When overly fatigued, I often suffered from partial seizures: surreal, frightening, and incapacitating events that usually lasted no more than 5 minutes, but left me in a state of diminished mental capacity for hours. Things got worse in the fall of 2007, when I suffered two Grand Mal seizures within two months. For several weeks after that, while doctors tried to find drugs that worked for me, I suffered anxiety attacks whenever I felt the signs of the onset of a seizure. Eventually, I started taking an appropriate dose of effective drugs. I discovered that larger doses of any one drug caused debilitating side effects, but that a combination of a moderate dose of two different drugs adequately protected me from seizure with minimal side effects. I haven’t had a significant seizure since.
Today, I marvel at my good fortune, and I relish everything that life has to offer.
