A lot of intrapersonal communication. Positive thinking, telling myself "you have come too far, you still have work to do here, so keep pressing forward." In fact, this past Monday, I hit my forehead on the bathtub as I was kneeling down shaking out my hair, and I started trying to panic. Instead, I remembered my neuro tests, check the pupils, check the extremities and make sure you can move, are you vomiting, are you dizzy, can you hear and see normally? What's the headache level like? Everything was checking out okay.
Then I contacted my sister and a survivor friend who was a nurse for 30 years to inform them of what happened. My sister still works in the ER, and she was with her friend who is a nurse, so they all went over standard concussion questions with me, and they also said I was probably okay if I hadn't already been sick or lost consciousness/felt lethargic. I stayed up for 3 hours to make sure no new symptoms popped up, but I was prepared to go to the ER if needed. My sister was either going to come stay with me that night if I needed her, but she definitely came over the next day to check on me. I didn't lose consciousness, didn't see stars, only had a mild headache and my forehead was sore, but I was still a little anxious to sleep. I believe I was more annoyed/angry than anything.
I kept saying "dammit, no! I did not come this far to go out over something so weak like hitting my forehead on accident, and I don't even like the way my hair turned out." Female feelings about the hair, but survivor feelings about hitting my head and "going out" that way, I was pissed! I called my neurologist the next morning and spoke with her and the nurse, they both said I was okay but to call immediately if anything changed. Told my professors at class but I still felt okay. I had my neurologist appointment at 9:30 AM on 2/4 anyway, so we just followed up with it then. We were both laughing, but it's not funny!
Do I feel that the situation is too big for me?
Sometimes, yes. With these headaches and the fact that I cannot take triptans (migraine medication) because they work by constriction and I've already had a vessel injury by hemorrhagic stroke, it's so frustrating. I take two different pain medications, one is a rescue and it's also narcotic. I'm not trying to walk around high everyday just to ease some migraine pain. I sometimes feel like a science experiment because of how many medications I have been on, both while hospitalized and since then. I worry about the other organs in my body (mainly liver and kidneys) sometimes because I am still young and if I am to follow life expectancy for the women in my family, I will live to be in my 90s, that's a long time to be on medication!!
How do I cope with that?
I go back to the drawing board with my neuro team, therapist, vocational counselor and advisor at school. However, a lot of it is really how I feel in my spirit and my stubborn mindset that is hell bent on success and determined to rise above anything that tries to bring me down. I just want to live, I don't want to live my life wasted by spending time and energy worrying when I could be working towards a goal that matters. If not for me, for someone else. If I need a real reality check, I will go bring out the journals and pictures from those days in the hospital, I'll pull out one of my first outfits in my life (it was a Cabbage Patch doll outfit, and still too big for my premature body), my birth certificate and look at them. My birth certificate has the weight listed as one pound, eight ounces. I have a picture of my parents holding me for the first time, and one of my favorites is my dad holding me 16 days after birth, because I was too sick before then, to be held by them. I look at that, see how small I was and my translucent skin, and say "don't you dare give up right now. You've come too far, you've got work to do. Acknowledge this pain, experience this pain, and release it." One of my most true beliefs about pain is that you "can go there, but don't stay there." Don't allow yourself to dwell in it. I think me acknowledging it all from the beginning and my first memory being a good one (02/13/12 was my first real memory that doesn't seem like a dream, everything before that is blurry to me and I'm not sure if it was real or imagined) set the precedent for the rest of my life. "Do good, live well" which is something my father instilled in my siblings and me from the time we were young, both in action and word.
thank you!!
