The semester has started again! I wrote a paper for an assignment last week, and I just realized how the theme of the paper applies to my blog. It was a personal essay written about a characteristic you have and how it applies to your future career.
As I felt the razor on my head and the weight of my hair slipping away, I was filled with anxious anticipation of what was to come. As I faced the next several hours of brain surgery, my courageous spirit was taking root and growing. This courage, which enabled me to arrive at this moment, would continue to serve me on my life’s journey.
Why would courage be one of my greatest personal strengths? It takes courage to face the unknown, as well as to face the “what-ifs.” What if something went wrong during the surgery? What if I still had seizures when it was all over? What if they resected too much or too little of my brain tissue? Courage would be needed to face the unknown, daily battle of a brain injury, and to believe that I made the right decision in the long run.
For unknown reasons, I began having seizures when I was four years old. While growing up I would have an occasional seizure. As tests and equipment advanced technologically over the years, doctors discovered a cyst in my left temporal lobe; but medicine evolved as well, and I was able to live a fairly healthy childhood. I credit my parents for much of this. They modeled courage for me, teaching me that I was not my epilepsy, only that it was a small portion of my larger world. Seizures didn’t control who I was or my accomplishments in life, they taught me.
As I grew older and out of adolescence, the seizures worsened. By my mid-twenties, I was having seizures every day. On multiple seizure medications, I felt like a walking zombie. My memory and cognitive skills worsened and left much to be desired. Often, people could not tell I was having a seizure. I would come out of one and find myself in a different room and wonder how I got there. Other times, I would alert from a seizure to find strangers staring at me. I soon learned not to worry what others thought of me. When I could no longer drive after losing my license, I had to have the courage to ask others for assistance. I learned that others wanted to help if I would just let them.
Since I also work in the field of neurology, I see a lot of patients in my situation, but never did I imagine being where I was at that point. When a person gets to a point of complete desperation and feeling no other solutions, this is when courage kicks in. It was then that I realized that surgery was my only hope for any chance of a decent quality of life.
I hear a grinding noise which brings me out of my flashback of my journey. I go in and out of awareness and the noise continues. It sounds like a drill. Oh, yes, it is and I can feel the pressure now. Talk about a major headache! After some time, the anesthesiologist asks me how I’m doing. I remember telling him that I was good, but the drilling was becoming a little annoying. I heard some people laugh. As I became more alert, I remember thinking how cool it was to be alert during my own brain surgery!
My courage is not located in my life-long battle of seizures, or in the brain surgery itself; but rather in facing the months and years which have followed the surgery. I recovered very quickly from the operation and was back to work in about eight weeks. But adjusting to the changes of having a brain injury has required me to call upon my reserves of courage. Living without most of my left temporal lobe has caused a battle with depression, memory problems, and changes in my executive functions.
It was in these challenges that I developed more of a passion for the psychological component of the brain. I’ve spent so many years focusing on the medical/neurophysiology aspect of the brain that I never stopped to consider the portion that the psychological role plays. It was then I decided to pursue psychology in light of my experience in neurology. Facing the challenges against me head on instead of running from them, I decided to finish my undergraduate degree. I realized that you only have one chance at life. While my repaired brain is still working, I’m going to use what is left of it!
