tastebuds

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I’ve written before about my curiosity on how this stroke has and will change me and the lessons I will learn from this entire experience. The reality is that I am physically changed–there is a dead spot in my brain. Of course I’m recuperating and healing and finding new paths around that oxygen starved part of my thalamus, but I can’t help but think about how I will never get that specific part of my brain back.

Between trying to survive my busy days and staving off boredom, I try to make a lot of observations about myself and this whole process. I’m investingating what’s changed, and it’s interesting to note what taxes me and what invigorates me.

You know about my visit to Best Buy–it sent my brain in weird overdrive. Not very surprising, actually, because that sort of stimulation has consistently led to disaster. In fact, that kind of situation was what led me to the emergency room after a rambling post on how I was feeling.

Ugh–am I making sense?
I went to the emergency room after a trip to the grocery store. I searched on my site for a rundown of what finally got me to go to the emergency room to get checked out, and I couldn’t find a post about it. Maybe it’s there, and my brain is so burnt tonight I can’t find it. Anyway, at the risk of boring you twice, I’ll brief you on what led me to the emergency room two days after my stroke.

It was a trip to the grocery store.

The day of my stroke, I was out of town in the mountains. Though I felt incredibly strange and distressed by what we now realize was “The Stroke,” I didn’t go to the hospital. It’s hard to measure normality under vacation scenarios, in which one is not pushed at all, and where one has no basis for comparison for one’s capabilities. (does that make sense? I hope so). Anyway, I just didn’t go to the hospital. The next day, we came back home and spent the day traveling–so Tuesday January 2nd was the first day home. I woke up and decided not to go to work “because I wasn’t feeling normal and wanted to rest.”

I decided to go to the grocery store (our house was out of groceries after a 2 week trip to the mountains)–and to put it succinctly, I was completely overwhelmed by all the labels and all the words in teh store. It’s hard to explain it any other way, but I stood there mesmerized by all the labels, which eventually became a messy blur in my head. I couldn’t figure out what to buy (it makes sense now that my short term memory was so screwed up that I couldn’t keep the grocery list in my head), and emerged from the store with a jar of Muir Glen spaghetti sauce and nothing else (bravo to Muir Glen for getting a stroke victim to buy their spaghetti sauce!).

I didn’t even NEED spaghetti sauce, but that’s all I managed to buy. I don’t even know WHY I bought spaghetti sauce, and how long I wandered the store. But when I emerged from the store, I realized something was terribly wrong with me. Terribly. Wrong.

I drove home, bewildered at my state of mind, my foggy mind beginning to realize I needed to ask for help. When I got home, I decided I needed to go to the hospital, or at least to the doctor. I googled my doctor online and called–they were on lunch break. I wanted to call my husband, but then realized I could not recall his phone number. Who could I call? I realized I remembered NO phone numbers at all, and that I therefore had NO ONE to call for help.

I sat at home, feeling a bit numb, not even panicked (this stroke has me feeling so ignorant at times that I don’t feel panic, even at crucial moments). Who could I call? After awhile, a phone number popped into my head–a phone number I did not recognize. I figured, “Well, if the phone number popped in my head, it’s probably a phone number I call all the time, and whoever it is might help me.”

So numbly, I dialed it. A man picked up and started chatting with me. “Who is this?” I asked.

It was my husband. He asked me what was going on.

“I just called because this phone number was in my head,” I said.

He said he would immediately come home and take me to the hospital. That’s how I ended up at the hospital.

Oh what was I talking about? (Scrolling up) I see I was talking about what taxes and invigorates me. (Sorry, my mind is like jelly and I keep rambling and I can’t keep on topic! I hate it, I hate it!). In correlation to the whole grocery store and best buy scene, the other day i went to a bookstore and felt invigorated there. Strange. I will have to write about that.

But the weird thing is that I was going to write about my tastebuds when I started this post. Tastebuds as in my appetite has flown out the window these days. Where before I was a total foodie, I find very little pleasure in food. It’s awful, I want to love food again, but can’t remember to eat, and can’t figure out WHAT to eat, and nothing tastes as good as I remember it. And I just eat a lot less because this desire has been so greatly diminished. Is that a part of me that’s changed?

On one hand, i don’t mind eating a bit less. On the other hand, I’ve lost a great pleasure center in my life.

Um. Okay. I’m ending this post, because I am rambling on and on and going in weird directions and I’m embarrassed about the writing here.  Yes, it is the WORST written post of mine EVER!  And it must end.

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