Firstly my up-most
apologies for leaving such a massive time between my last post and
this one, I had been meaning to do a big update for weeks but with
work going so well (and subsequently me working more and thus being
tired a hell of a lot of the time!) its basically slipped past me or
I have lacked the required energy to do anything. So with my minor
“The Sun style” apology out of the way* lets get on with the
update.
I am gonna attempt to
keep this in a somewhat chronological order as that seems to make
sense to me. Basically when I last left my avid readers I had just
returned to work (yay!) but in a thoroughly George RR Martin way I
left you hanging by a thread as to what actually went down from there
onwards.
I've basically gone
from around 8-12 hours a week and no responsibility to slowly working
my way back to my old role of being a shift manager and only being
about 5-6 hours off a normal full time week for someone in my
position. I was very much like a lost little lamb for the first few
weeks and then thanks to the familiarity of my job (its now 7+ years
for me) and my workmates/customers I came back out of my shell and
rediscovered some much needed confidence and more importantly a large
part of the person I thought had died that fateful day of my rupture.
Above is my wall planner, the green dots are work days, as you can see they have increased a lot!
I know that may sound a
bit OTT to someone who has not experienced a brain injury, its hard
to explain how disconnected you feel with your own thoughts and body
post injury. Its like waking up one day and discovering that
everything you ever knew or did has been experienced by a totally
different person. You remember large parts of that person and those
experiences and yet it still doesn't feel like you. Its a thoroughly
confusing thing to even understand yourself, let alone explain to
someone else. But I digress, thanks to work I have begun to
rediscover a lot of myself again which is fantastic. There's still
some way to go, and there's still a lot of daily problems (which I
will detail later) but overall I cannot be more pleased with myself,
and for a perennial self hater such as myself its a bit bizarre to
feel pleased and proud of myself but I am.
Another fantastic thing
happened for me at work, a few months back (and I did intend to blog
about it straight away) my speech therapist from Rehab came in for a
social-able beverage with his friend. It was the most amazing feeling
for me throughout this whole experience to have someone who helped me
back to where I am now come into my workplace and get served by me.
He even allowed me a big hug! Even thinking about it now still makes
me smile. I got on with a lot of the medical professionals in the
Kings Lodge Rehab unit at The Royal Hospital Derby but my speech
therapist was the one person I could truly say I bonded with, we have
a similar sense of humour and equally impeccable music taste so you
could say on my part it was a bit of a bro-mance. But it really
hammered home to me that day just how far I have come in such a short
time. Even up to the point of surgery I really doubted whether I
would be able to go back to work at all, let alone work back up to my
old role, and now I am doing both of those things I still cannot
quite believe it.
Above is a after and before photo, just to prove that i am getting more beautiful, what a difference a year makes!
My job is a Shift
Manager in a fairly busy pub working for a large pub chain (which
shall remain nameless) and requires a lot of skills to do well. Its
no rocket science mind, but it requires excellent time management,
multi-tasking, interpersonal skills and physical strength and
endurance. You're basically on your feet all day, dealing with both
customers and staff. You manage money, time, products and yourself.
And its full of noise, light and people. It is essentially the worst
environment for a healing brain to be in, due to the masses of
information constantly being bombarded at you all the time and the
physical exhaustion the job brings. But I am still managing to do it
well again, so once more I'm forced to be proud of myself.
That's not to say it
does not have its pitfalls to it. I am left after most shifts in a
lot of pain, both physical and mental exhaustion as well. Its
difficult to get this point across to people because at work my
quality of work has remained high, but for me everyday and shift at
work is a big challenge. The main problem is my lack of energy, do
not get me wrong compared to a year ago my energy has increased
massively but its still nowhere near what I would describe as normal.
I think when I say to people that I am tired they just think “hey
I've been to work and I am tired too” which is fair enough, but
life with a brain injury means most days if you are lucky you start
at about 66% energy and that rapidly depletes pretty quickly.
Why? Because of what
happened to me, my brain has to try that much harder to do just the
simple things. I have noticed that as I get more tired at work, my
left side (The side my bleed really shat on) gets really very weak
and I feel as if I am going to fall over a lot, which for a 29 year
old man is a sad thing to think whilst sober. I also from that have
to think a lot about walking, I know that sounds insane but as my
energy drops I seriously have to think through walking, its a skill I
have learnt since I was a wee nipper (rumours I was born with a beard
are untrue!) and yet here I find myself as a grown man having to
actively think about walking so I do not fall over. It feels
ridiculous to type as a sentence but its true. I also get a lot more
headaches from work, which I am assuming is just me over-doing it. So
I'm sensible about it now, if I feel faint or especially painful I go
take a breather and then try to go about things a little slower if
possible, however due to the nature of my profession its somewhat
difficult sometimes. I am however determined to not give up, I love
my job most of the time, I am a type of person that thrives on
personal contact with people and it turns out I'm so good at my job
in the first place that even after having a large bleed in the brain
and subsequently brain surgery I can still do my job pretty well.
Thats nice.
So a lot of my time now
requires extensive energy management, I'm as bad as a iPhone for
rapid battery level dropping, but it's something I am very much
getting used to. That said everything in my life is pretty good at
the moment something I never thought I would achieve again, I have a
good social life again, I'm pretty much back at work full time, I'm
losing some much needed weight, regaining self confidence, and
beginning to trust my brain again. I'm still in a rich vein of
musical creativity too and I fully intend to finish an album of music
before the year is through. So everything is really good.
As I type this now,
today is in fact my “Anni-versary” something that brain aneurysm
survivors tend to use as a phrase to celebrate the fateful day it all
changed. My rupture took place pretty much a year to the day today,
in that time I've been through so much (most of it detailed in this
blog) and whilst I would wish I could have learnt a lot of these
lessons in a different less painful manner, still I am pleased I can
say I have taken something good from this whole experience. Its
insane when I try to think about it all because its all both a
mixture of yesterday and a lifetime ago, but I remind myself its been
just a year.
And what a year its
been, I'm going to have to work hard to top it! In a year I have
re-learnt how to talk properly, re-learnt a lot of my cognitive
functions, gone from having to actually write what day it is to know
what day it is, having brain surgery, relearning how to play guitar
and watched Man Utd go from a bit rubbish to a bit less rubbish
(can't have it all!) so overall i'm pretty pleased.
My blog title refers to
“70% complete” which is a nod to rehab (where my journey really
began) and in rehab one of the (I'm assuming) psychological
techniques they use to measure you is to ask on a scale of 0-100
where you feel you are in your rehabilitation. 0 being not fixed at
all, 100 being back to normal. I always hovered around the 50% or so
line as though I rapidly improved in rehab I still felt very broken
then, mainly because A) I knew so little about my condition and B)
Did not know how they would “Fix me”. I'm pleased to say I now
feel around about 70% complete, which is an improvement from before.
I think the remaining 30% will come when I get the all-clear of being
AVM free and when my energy levels start to get back to normal.
I really did not know
how I would feel today, I was not expecting some kind of revelation
nor total sadness, perhaps a mixture of both. Mostly it just feels
like a normal day with a bit of extra celebration thrown in too, and
that's just fine with me. Here's to many more normal days to come!
One good thing about hitting the 1 year mark is that my re-bleed
chances start to drop down to the base rate (3-4% ish a year I think)
whilst its no exact science it is reassuring to now that I can be a
little less scared now.
Finally I would like to
thank from the bottom of my heart ALL the people who managed to get
me to this point today, its been an incredibly tough journey, the
hardest one of my life but I do know I would not have been able to
get here now without everyone's help, support and love. So thank you,
I would like to think you all know who you are, but if you think “Did
I help?” chances are you did so thank you!
That's about all for me for now. Now turn this bad boy up!
*A sun style apology is generally printed in exceptionally small font on the the bottom of the page
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