7-31-11
Okay, wow. Where to start? I have been through so much with this whole brain surgery thing this past month and a half. I’ll begin with this...
I’ve started playing golf again. Bruce and I played nine holes last Thursday, and then we played a full eighteen this past Saturday. It went... well, very well, all things considered. We’ve used those words frequently lately: all things considered. I shot a 44 my first time back after brain surgery, and I was pleased with that. I then shot an 87 on Saturday and almost came back to beat Bruce in our version of the Stableford game, but ended up just one point short. On that last nine, I shot a 42. Now, that is better.
Right after the surgery I had dreams, scary and helpless dreams. In one, I could not complete a simple writing prompt during a Bisti Writing Project class, a different one from the one I taught for two weeks in June. All the different members of this “dreamy” class nodded in affirmation and agreement that Pat could not write at this point in his recovery, all things considered, so instead they smiled at me uncomfortably when they saw I was not writing anything at all, but they knew why. During the lunch break, I wandered off alone to go find some place to eat knowing I would not be able to find my way back. When I woke up that morning, that last part of this dream reminded me of my grandfather (when he had Alzheimer’s) who drove off one day and got so lost that the kindness of a stranger was the only thing that brought him back to grandma. In this dream, I walked towards a Burger King, and then the dream ended.
I had my one beginning of school dream, too, the one where I am not prepared at all, but school has started anyway, and the children are all in the classroom looking at me expectantly. This one included parents (which can also be a recurring theme), about fifty of them, and a small computer screen that I tried to read for attendance or the lunch count or something, but could not read it at all; it was only 4” x 6”, and it just looked black to me. My eyes weren’t working very well right after surgery, so was it the screen or my eyes? The parents looked at me expectantly, too, as if something was not right, waiting for me to do something, anything.
In yet one other post-surgery dream, I was riding my scooter through our neighborhood, winding my way down Anasazi Drive away from our home in utter darkness. I saw some faint lights far ahead of me, somewhere near the (last names's) house. I was frightened because it was so dark, and I could not see well again. Was it just dark, or were my eyes not working well? My sense of balance was off, and I became frightened of tipping and falling. Then I remembered mid-ride that I was not even supposed to be driving. Because of that fear, I never reached those lights.
I wrote about that last bad dream because the recent reality was so much nicer. Eric took my scooter away to fix it a couple of weeks ago. He re-fastened the muffler that actually fell off when he rode over a bump on Main Street. He continued to ride it, though, like the guys in Dumb and Dumber with the muffler shooting sparks while it scraped the street. He also worked on that leaking gas or oil problem; it’s still not fixed completely, though. I saw a small spot of something greasy under the scooter again before we left this morning.
Belinda and I then took our scooters for a ride that night, the night Eric brought my scooter back. We went to the Giant to put some gas in mine. It cost $2.96. Nice! In reality, it was not dark; it was light. In reality, I was allowed to drive my scooter, and my balance was fine. In reality, I was not alone; Belinda was with me. The reality really was so much better, all things considered.
Okay, wow. Where to start? I have been through so much with this whole brain surgery thing this past month and a half. I’ll begin with this...
I’ve started playing golf again. Bruce and I played nine holes last Thursday, and then we played a full eighteen this past Saturday. It went... well, very well, all things considered. We’ve used those words frequently lately: all things considered. I shot a 44 my first time back after brain surgery, and I was pleased with that. I then shot an 87 on Saturday and almost came back to beat Bruce in our version of the Stableford game, but ended up just one point short. On that last nine, I shot a 42. Now, that is better.
Right after the surgery I had dreams, scary and helpless dreams. In one, I could not complete a simple writing prompt during a Bisti Writing Project class, a different one from the one I taught for two weeks in June. All the different members of this “dreamy” class nodded in affirmation and agreement that Pat could not write at this point in his recovery, all things considered, so instead they smiled at me uncomfortably when they saw I was not writing anything at all, but they knew why. During the lunch break, I wandered off alone to go find some place to eat knowing I would not be able to find my way back. When I woke up that morning, that last part of this dream reminded me of my grandfather (when he had Alzheimer’s) who drove off one day and got so lost that the kindness of a stranger was the only thing that brought him back to grandma. In this dream, I walked towards a Burger King, and then the dream ended.
I had my one beginning of school dream, too, the one where I am not prepared at all, but school has started anyway, and the children are all in the classroom looking at me expectantly. This one included parents (which can also be a recurring theme), about fifty of them, and a small computer screen that I tried to read for attendance or the lunch count or something, but could not read it at all; it was only 4” x 6”, and it just looked black to me. My eyes weren’t working very well right after surgery, so was it the screen or my eyes? The parents looked at me expectantly, too, as if something was not right, waiting for me to do something, anything.
In yet one other post-surgery dream, I was riding my scooter through our neighborhood, winding my way down Anasazi Drive away from our home in utter darkness. I saw some faint lights far ahead of me, somewhere near the (last names's) house. I was frightened because it was so dark, and I could not see well again. Was it just dark, or were my eyes not working well? My sense of balance was off, and I became frightened of tipping and falling. Then I remembered mid-ride that I was not even supposed to be driving. Because of that fear, I never reached those lights.
I wrote about that last bad dream because the recent reality was so much nicer. Eric took my scooter away to fix it a couple of weeks ago. He re-fastened the muffler that actually fell off when he rode over a bump on Main Street. He continued to ride it, though, like the guys in Dumb and Dumber with the muffler shooting sparks while it scraped the street. He also worked on that leaking gas or oil problem; it’s still not fixed completely, though. I saw a small spot of something greasy under the scooter again before we left this morning.
Belinda and I then took our scooters for a ride that night, the night Eric brought my scooter back. We went to the Giant to put some gas in mine. It cost $2.96. Nice! In reality, it was not dark; it was light. In reality, I was allowed to drive my scooter, and my balance was fine. In reality, I was not alone; Belinda was with me. The reality really was so much better, all things considered.
On a great note, I never had a scary, helpless dream about golf. Next time, more on how the golf went. Today (Sunday, August 7th), I scored my first post-surgery birdie! More later...
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