Category Archives: Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned from Brain Surgery – Humor

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A sense of humor will give you a better temperament than frustration. Learn to laugh at yourself. It will help you to feel less self-conscious.

My family is always joking around about things and it was no different with brain surgery.  We laughed about pretty much everything that we could to help lighten the heavy burden that we were living.  When I say “we”, it did not escape me that even though I was the one in bed bandaged and tangled with medical equipment, “they” were tasked with keeping my spirits up.

When I was home, we laughed when my brother had to push me up the stairs because I didn’t have the energy to make it by myself.  We laughed that I used a ski pole to navigate before I got a cane.

In Florida, when I listed to the right while walking on the beach, my friends were always between me and the ocean. “No way. I’m not going to tell your family I let you walk alone and you veered into the ocean.”

When I give the wrong answer to a waiter’s question because I’m trying to fake that I actually heard, it’s humorous to see their expression when saying that I’ll pay my bill with “French fries, not chips.”

I always strive to be a “Pleasant Miserable” Person when I’m having a bad day.  I strive to find laughter and joy from a vantage point that is, simply, ridiculous.  A Brain tumor?  Deaf in one ear?  Unable to smile normally?  Unable to move because of head pain more often than I want to acknowledge?  Yea, you gotta laugh. . . once you stop crying.

Lessons Learned from Brain Surgery #2

Allow yourself to grieve because there is a new you. It may be pretty darn close to the old one, or possibly quite different.  But then you have to get up.

There are many people who have brain surgery to remove an Acoustic Neuroma and return to life as they knew it.  Not everyone is significantly altered.  However, many of us are changed forever.  It’s ok to be sad about the loss of our previous selves and lives.   I found that it was helpful to recognize those differences, to grieve the change prior to accepting the new me.  Then it was time to get to know the new me and move forward once again with life.

 

Lessons Learned From Brain Surgery #1

Be optimistic, but don’t discount possible outcomes just because they don’t sound fun.

I did extensive research prior to my brain surgery.  What I learned was helpful, fascinating, and terrifying.  It was very helpful to have information tucked away in my mind to retrieve as I experienced things when waking up.  However, I did discount all scary outcomes just because I didn’t want to experience them, didn’t have time, and couldn’t conceive of those things happening to me.

Topics that were helpful were facial “weakness”, which I learned was actually paralysis; dry eye and gold weight implants in eyelids; single sided deafness; spinal fluid leak; taste changes after surgery that angers facial nerves.

Lessons Learned

Do research to understand the possible outcomes.  I found that it was very helpful when I was overwhelmed with recovery at the hospital to know what various issues could arise.  Bits of knowledge popped into my head from my research when I experienced facial paralysis, dry eye, strange tasting food and hearing loss.  When the doctors recommended a gold weight (which is actually titanium) for my eyelid, I understood exactly the benefits and ramifications of the procedure.