turns out i'm not mentally ill after all.

[mopinko]

first off, the idea that there is a mind that is separate from the brain is ridiculous.
an old idea that needs to die, and die now.

but after a lifetime of strange things happening in my head, it turns out that when i took a baseball bat in the face at 6, it did lasting damage.
ever since the science of tbi's has emerged, i have wondered.
10 years ago, when this was all new, i saw a sleep doc, who is a neurologist.
i asked him about that, and he said he wasnt sure, but he wasnt arrogant enough to say it wasnt a thing. thank god for that humility.

i had horrid sleep, and a cpap didnt really help.
the main "symptom" of my "major episodic depression" was bone crushing fatigue.
but i had far more symptoms of a brain injury.

i was always a klutz. (i dont remember anything from before that day, so, all i remember was what i was like after.)
an epic klutz.
i cant dance.
i cant catch a ball.
i cant skate.
i cant keep a beat.
i can barely drive.
i cant walk w/o falling.
i have a short circuit in the aural nerve to my left ear.
i had seizures throughout my childhood, in the form of hallucinations, that i never told anyone about.

i was getting really concerned that age was getting to me. i was having aphasias.
i had a neuro/psyche exam, and they declared me fine. but i was always a good test taker.
for the last 2 years, i have been just awful. like everything else in my life, it had a plausible explanation. i lost a sibling, then i lost a bil, then i managed my sister's campaign, and it wore me out.

trying to crawl out of this, i started experimenting w mmj.
i've been smoking since i was 16, off and on. it always felt like weakness. sometimes, i was shamed over it.
turns out to be an effective treatment for me.
i do more now than i have in most of my life, but it has enough effect that it is clear to me that what i was doing was self medicating. it always felt like a lifeline that i needed. turns out it was.

i never got "high". when my friends would discuss the relative merits of this bag or that bag, i thought they were a bit crazy.
after my divorce, i was smoking more than i ever had, and weathered those first couple years well.
then my lungs and throat rebelled and i quit. edibles never did anything for me. turns out i just needed one more brownie.
but i fell down a well.

at a physical last year, my bloodwork showed signs that i was not sleeping well, so back to the sleep doc i went.
now, i am terribly fond of this doc. he is one that shares what he knows w a smile, and we chatted about brains for most of that first visit 10 years ago.
i had to wait several months to get in, and i was so glad when they called to say it would be a facetime visit.

tho our first step will be a sleep study, we will do more follow up in the fall.
but our hour on the phone was full of that look on the face that docs get when you check a big box on the list of symptoms.
itty bitty things, like my feet move like when you have td. that ankle roll that happens is a terribly common occurrence throughout these decades. i have learned to roll when i fall, and only occasionally get hurt.
but i am an old lady now, my bones are starting to thin, and this shit is getting dangerous.
i have almost stopped driving. i am the queen of the fender bender. when he asked about my driving, we both got that look.


i'm pretty sure he has never had a patient that came in not only having stitched together a long string a tiny quirks and big questions, to come up w a state of the art dx, which had stumped probably 100 doctors over the years, but who had already found an effective treatment, sorted out the dosage, and was already at the "omg, is this what normal feels like? shit!" stage.

part of what took me down this path is that the same thing happened to my youngest child. when it happens to my kid, i drill down.
a couple years after that first appt, the same doc was part of the team that found a brain injury that we had all forgotten, that turned out to be worse that we thought. apparently there is a genetic tendency to get permanent damage after a brain injury.

my head is kind of spinning about what all this means. i do know that i have been having a really great year. the healing is very clear to me, to wit- i was having a lot of trouble w aphasia. disturbing trouble. as i sorted out which mj strains worked for me, i found my language skills to be a useful marker.
i have always been a writer. but i started doing more and more writing, and considering writing that book i was always going to write.
aphasia gone. gone.
my internal voice getting more and more 'writerly', my vocabulary more available.
i started editing my stream of consciousness, automatically.
then the other day, after visiting a friend who had lost a child, in the car on the way home, i wrote a poem in my head.
i have started talking to the pets, and the other day i greeted the beet and carrot sprouts.
doc laughed at that one, but he had that face, too.

the fatigue is lower than ever. 8-9 hours of sleep and no naps.
getting so much done. my farm is having a great spring, and i am anticipating a great summer.

life begins at 65?
i guess so.