Don't Worry ... Just Smile : )
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Today's Empowering Quote
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"Good humor is tonic for the mind and body. It is the
best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business
asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human
burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and
contentment."
--Grenville Kleiser
I have been told by my friends that I have a "tender heart" and have been nicknamed "goosebumps" because everything gives me chills. I can cry at the drop of a hat and little, small things can bring me joy. Perhaps it is because I have had alot of illness in my life or perhaps it is because I have a highly sensitive nervous system, but I can see some things that other's don't. I find four leaf clovers at the drop of a hat. I have found thousands in my life. I can cry at a TV commercial. I can stare at a picture and jump into it and be in the picture. I can listen to music and laugh or cry with the lyrics. I can cry with a book. I can read a paragraph in a book and stop and think about what I am reading as I go along and really digest it. I can live the book and not just read it. I like to use my five senses. I wanted to pose a question to everyone. What makes you happy? What brings you joy? How do you use your senses? I will say that I love sitting in the clovers and looking for four-leaf clovers. I love nature. I love painting. Has any book made you cry? I cried as I read "To Kill A Mockingbird". I get chills every time I hear the National Anthem. I like to share small joys with others as these small joys are what make my day seem so much more lively and wonderful. They are gifts from God. Any small joys in your life you want to share?
I spent most of yesterday in bed because I was so sore and my brain was telling me, "No more, Val! No more!" I had run myself ragged again which is very easy for me to do. I have to live within a daily envelop of energy and if I am unwell or if the weather is poor or if there is something exciting going on (say a flood!) that takes up all of my energy and zaps some for the next day. I was looking at the date today and realized that I had passed up my two-month anniversary of my surgery without even realizing it. It was on the seventh of July! The surgery seems like it was so long ago. It wasn't because I have only two inches of hair to prove it! Quite a few of you have written me or asked me what my surgeries were about so I decided to tell everyone in this entry and celebrate today for two months of being so much healthier than I was the last five years!! Sounds crazy because I just had the surgery, but when you have alot of cerebral spinal fluid on your brain taken off and the swelling gone down, it is just amazing what kind of energy you get back and, wow, the brain works again! It actually thinks sometimes! The picture above, which some of you may recall seeing in my beloved sister, Krissy's, journal was taken the day after my surgery. There is sweet Chelsea with me. She came and stayed for six days with me. She had nothing to do. We were in Baltimore and if any of you have ever been to Baltimore recently, it is a very dangerous place for an 18-year-old lovely girl. So she had to stay in the hotel the whole time. She never complained once. This was the week she decided to come live with me.
What were the surgeries? I guess I will start at the beginning. My first surgery was 1 1/2 years ago (Feb. 2002). I had a suboccipital decompression, craniotomy, and laminectomy of c-1. This was for Arnold Chiari Malformation Type 1. What, eh? What did she say? Boy, I have had to learn some interesting concepts and some things about the brain that Iwould never, ever have thought. Basically, though, they took out a little bit of the skull and made room for the brain that was pushing through and they took adhesions off the brain, and made the hole (foramen magnum) that the spinal column goes through bigger... yadda...not a surgeon. The second surgery was for pseudotumor cerebri. I received a ventriculo-atrial shunt. Chiari (Kee-are-ee) to put it in simple terms is usually congenital and is when your brain does not have enough room within the skull and is pushed through (the foramen magnum) into the spinal canal. It is measured in millimeters. Most people start getting symptoms within a couple to 5 or ten millimeters. I was at 22 millimeters when I had the surgery! It was astounding and pretty rare to see that extent of herniation. At that extent you can usually find paralysis and sometimes death. I was very lucky that I did not have a stroke! So, having this for years and years and not knowing what it was, has caused me alot of physical and emotional pain. Since all of your bodily functions pass through the spinal canal and are run by nerves and chiari pinches those nerves, alot of my bodily functions were affected and still are today. I spent many, many years thinking that I would find whatever it was that was making me "see double and triple" visually and hurt and feel like I was walking around in "pea soup". It took the doctors so long to figure out what was wrong because when I was first sick, as a child, the MRI was not invented yet. As I got older, I was already known as the anxious child and perhaps this was "anxiety and psychosomatic". Grrrrr....that was so awful for me to be labeled psychosomatic. Then as an adult, they said everything was my fibromyalgia, but I knew differently. It was found on an eye exam when my vision started failing as these disorders cause swollen optic nerves and blindness. Now, the second surgery, for the shunt, was much easier than the first surgery. It had much less healing. They placed a shunt from my brain to my jugular vein. It takes the excess CSF fluid from my brain and dumps it into my jugular. Most people have it dumped into their abdominal cavity, but I have had too many surgeries there already. I had to have a shunt put in because the first surgery alone was not enough to take care of my most meanacing symptoms and I still had migraine headaches and swollen optic nerves and back pain and hip pain and a stupid swollen brain! Now, my fatigue isn't quite as bad, my brain allows me to think a bit better, my headaches are about 50% what they were, my eyes are alot better, and well, the best thing of all is that the doc saved my life and my eyesight!! What could be better than that!!
Good afternoon! I took a walk downtown to check out the water level and it seems to have receded about a foot. That is a relief! I fed my beloved duckies some duck food from the 25 cent dispenser as they looked confused and hungry. I do love my ducks. The park that was washed out is my favorite park I have ever been to. It is just gorgeous. Alot of Saturdays go by when someone is married there - especially during the summer. My one-hour pictures only took three hours which is not so bad. My daughter called me and wants to have a mother-daughter night tonight with my friend Karen and her daughter Ali. I told her that all the roads are closed and she said that she will find a way to get here and pick me up. Teenagers think they can do anything. They think they are invincible. Perhaps she will fly with Sara's cape. Swoosh....Swoosh.... Toodles, my friends!
Yikes! I woke up to a knock on my door this morning. My friend and next-door-neighbor, Roger, was standing there. He said, "Hurry up! We are being flooded out! Go get your camera!" I threw on some clothes and shoes and took a walk with him. I didn't have a camera, so I bought a disposable one at a local drugstore. What I saw made me quite sad. All the roads going into my town are closed today. The local river is riding high and flooding into some local businesses and into some houses. I had no idea that this was going to happen. I am high enough on a hill to be safe, but I do feel a little trapped knowing that if something happened, say an emergency or something of that nature, I could not get out. Chelsea is also at a friend's house and can't get home for some time. Who knows how long. We have had hard rain from the remnants of Ivan for about a day now, but that rain on its own could not have caused the flooding. We must have gotten alot of down-river water from other areas that were hard hit. People are outside just staring at all the water. Strange. The last time I saw any flooding was in 1972 during Hurricane Agnes in Virginia. People are driving their cars up to my block to higher ground right now. Hmm... Anyone have wood for an ark? And the landlord has not fixed the hole in my ceiling!
drip.....drip.....drip.....drip.....drip.....CRASH.....drip.....drip
Chinese water torture with a bit of plaster falling intermittently. I can't give you pictures of the flooding yet as everyone in the town is developing their pictures and the one-hour developing is not an option. Also, the only drugstore that develops here has a parking lot that may flood over. I hope I can get the pictures in today. If not, it may take a day or two. It was sad going to the local park and seeing the ducks displaced out of the water and in mud. We have a beautiful local park that will have terrible erosion now. It is a place that I usually go to feed fish and ducks. The ducks didn't know where to go this morning. We also have a college football game going on this weekend as I live next to a college town (Go Penn State!) and they closed the main road into the campus and diverted the traffic. It will be an interesting weekend. They say most deaths from hurricanes come from people driving onto flooded roads. Please, nobody do this! Well, I am off here to go see if I can go get those pictures. Wish me luck!
Good evening everyone! I wanted to give a shout out to Sara from Sara's Days for her wonderful comment in her journal celebrating my pick for Editor's Pick this week. That was sweet of her. If you have a chance to check out her journal sometime, go read it. It is very inspirational! I can't believe that I received 19 comments in my comment section on my last entry. My-oh-my. I wanted to introduce you tonight to a very special friend of mine. It is my kitty cat, Honey. Her real name is Joy Faith. I had her name picked out even before I got her. I got her four years ago this October. She was an outdoor, feral cat. When I brought her home I just immediately started calling her Honey as Joy was just too hard to say. She has been a constant companion to me and has been such a wonderful girl. I believe that she is half Maine Coon and half American Shorthair. Her momma was a Maine Coon and her daddy was a black short hair. She looks a lot like her daddy, but has alot of personality traits of a Maine Coon cat. For those of you who have Maine Coones, you know what a treat it is to live with one! She has a trill and follows me around like a dog, but never sits in my lap like most cats do. She likes to fetch objects and is very alert with what is going on in her surroundings. She plays elaborate games and keeps me laughing day in and out. I am not sure when she sleeps as she is awake when I wake up and she hardly naps. She has a large vocabulary and even answers me when I ask her questions that require a yes or no answer. If she answers yes she says, "Myeah". If she wants no part of something, she answers, "Myooo". I will ask her if she wants to eat, or wants a treat, or wants to be held, etc. I believe that since she has been so good to me, why not ask her things, instead of treating her like she is just any old pet. She has been extra special to me as I have been very sick the last four years and she has been a reason for me to get up on some days when otherwise I would not have. I am very grateful for this. She seems to know when I am not quite right. When I came home from my surgeries she slept with me until I was up and about. I have always owned cats and Honey is by far the smartest and sweetest cat I have ever owned. Hope you enjoy the pictures!!
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