The Everywhereist

Sunday was a landmark of sorts, and it passed without me realizing it.

That, I suppose, was most significant at all. Sunday was the four-month anniversary of my surgery.

At some point, I’d stopped counting the days since my brain surgery, and then the weeks, and now, it seems, the months. Rand had left town the day before, so I mostly sat around, working on our Halloween costumes, and yelling at the football game that was playing on the T.V. in a vain attempt to pretend that he was still home.

It almost worked. Turns out, I’m nearly as adept at taunting Tony Romo as my husband is.

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Hanging out in the hospital exam room.

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I was hoping that brain surgery would teach me a thing or two. That I would wake up from my operation with some sort of hidden knowledge that’s only accessible to those who’ve had their skulls cracked open.

It’s not that I thought I’d wake up speaking French or anything (though I wouldn’t have been against that. I’ve always wanted to learn French). Rather, I imagined I’d groggily rub my eyes and look around with a new appreciation for the world around me. My new perspective would prevent me from getting upset about the small stuff.

I thought that after brain surgery, I could rise above the trivial crap we often find ourselves miring in.

And for a while, that was the case. They say that your true self comes out when you are heavily medicated, and my true self, to everyone’s surprise, was an absolute sweetheart. I loved all my nurses, even the blond that Rand had dubbed “the nasty one” (“You just don’t understand her like I do,” I said, drooling onto my gown). I declared my mother the best mother – NAY, the best HUMAN – in the entire universe. I was even tempted to call a few people that I hated and tell them how I had changed my mind about them, how I was wrong to suggest that if they were a crossword puzzle clue, they’d be “a four-letter word that starts with ‘c’ and rhymes with punt.”

Trust me, no one was more shocked than I about my new-found niceness and goodwill.

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One of the nice things about brain surgery is that you can pick out all sorts of clever things to say for when you come to. I had a few quips lined up (“I have a splitting headache!”, “Who wants morphine? I do! I do!”, and “Which of you bastards tried to tip my surgeon to ‘throw in a lobotomy’ while he was in there?”) but it was my friend Natalie who gave me the winner.

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It’s been six weeks since my surgery.

My surgeon said that it would take about six weeks until I felt completely like myself again. Six weeks until I was more or less recovered. And he was right. I feel like myself.

More or less.

I feel more tired. And more sensitive. Literally. I have a soft spot. Like babies do.

And I am less … tumor-y. And less headache-y. Are those even real words? I’m not sure. And I’m less concerned about whether or not they are.

Here’s what my head looked like right after my surgery:

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