A Broken Vessel; Nevertheless She Persisted: 3,080

According to my "Siri" it has been 3,080 days since February 1, 2005. That is 73,920 hours of recovering(I don't dare calculate the actual number of hours I may have been sleeping) from the damage that life sustaining blood cause when it escaped from my right middle cerebral artery! It occurred to me today, I had not written a blog post in about a month. It is not for the lack of posts that formulate in my exhausted brain as it refuses to simply fall asleep without pondering, reflecting, or writing emails and blog posts! Sometimes, much to my husband's dismay, I can't resist grabbing the pen and paper on my nightstand and writing these ideas down. Anyway, after a complete total and utter crash after a long busy weekend I decided to take today to go nowhere and do nothing but things I enjoy doing! So, blogging it is! Okay, so i also have a load of laundry in the washer but that seems manageable today! Yesterday, was another story. I stayed on the couch......ALL day until Nate came home from work. I knew attempting stairs would surely result in a lack of depth perception or even worse, forgetting a stair means I need to step differently than on a flat, familiar floor!I have ended up sliding down the stairs on my bottom a few times when I forgot to step! If you told me this story before my TBI, it would have scared me that a person could literally "forget to step" and there may have been a small piece of me that couldn't even believe such a thing could happen to an otherwise highly functioning person! Life is funny like that. I'm not going to lie to you, I am still learning to accept this reality in my life! With that being said, I crashed so hard this weekend that my head felt like it was "buzzing" and the only thing I was capable of was SLEEPING!!!! It has been years since I crashed this hard and this way. I no longer feel guilty about how many hours might have been spent sleeping because I know my brain needs it. There is no other way for it to recover from it's new way of functioning!! Even still, I push my limits sometimes and am always surprised by how exhausted a human being can feel after just a "normal, busy weekend".
With all that ranting behind me, here is what I have been up to the last month! The beginning of June started with a "BIANYS Annual Conference". This is always one of the highlights of the year for me! I get to see old friends and feel "normal with a brain injury" for two whole days! Everyone there gets it, because they live it or work with and advocate for loved ones with brain injury! It is a LONG, EXHAUSTING two days for everyone. But, well worth the calculated exhaustion. This year my friend K, convinced me to escape the dinner crowd and get some fresh air by walking across a busy street to Olive Garden. Thankfully, this city girl knows how to cross a busy street because this is a skill I still struggle with, especially on foot. Perhaps, you remember that my family always grabs my hand to avoid catastrophe. If left alone I don't manage it well. With K's expert street crossing skills we made it across a busy highway safely. It was nice to be in a quiet, dimly lit room after a day of harsh florescent lights and large crowds of indecisive people! We enjoyed a quiet,yummy dinner and were so stuffed K insisted on dessert "to go". Upon leaving, it was obviously pouring outside! The entrance to the hotel was right across the busy street but was set back quite a way from the road!!!We had not been prepared with an umbrella or even a jacket with a hood! I'm a shameless country girl, so I suggest just walking back to the hotel briskly! K, a girl with class, insists we do not walk in the rain!! She wants to wait it out until it stops, I want to go home and my Jeep is parked across that busy road between the rain drops! I sit with K for a few moments before calling Nate for some comic relief! He is amused and informs us it is supposed to rain ALL weekend! I'm so tired and I just want to go home and lay on my couch so I decide I am just going to brave that busy road myself, get my Jeep, and pick K up! She is a good friend and would never allow this to happen. After asking the Olive Garden staff for an umbrella to borrow she settled on just using a paper carry out bag to shield her hair from the water drops! As we are walking out the door a couple behind us is obviously amused by our solution to the rain problem. They apologize for laughing at the situation and seem to have a great sense of humor about it! K, still not keen on walking to the hotel with a paper bag over her head, asks them if they will give us a ride to the hotel across the street! Graciously they finally agree. I can only imagine what was going on in their minds. I am pretty sure they were trying to remember all the emails they had read about the latest "scam" to be weary of! We made it across the street safe and dry as we all laughed about the story they would tell their friends, it went something like picking up two "bag ladies". I added to their story, suggesting they include the part about the "bag ladies" being at a "brain injury conference" and leaving on a humid, cloudy evening without any thought of an umbrella! So, K gave me permission to share with you the story of our adventure and the photo to prove it!

June was also filled with a family reunion to celebrate my two amazing cousins. One graduating High School and the other a Yale graduate. But first we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary, a wedding, went strawberry picking, took my turn working at the library on a weekend (thankfully before summer reading was in full swing), never ending yard work, Nate's tractor restoration,fought a war on Carpenter Ants eating our log home, survived ablation #7 for a dear friend to correct heart arrhythmia, and the discovery of a benign spot on my dad's liver, aging grandparents, and the celebration of life after the death of a brother in Christ. July has proven busy, busy, busy too. Fireworks, friends, camp and life during the summer married to a busy service technician! Shoo, no wonder I crashed! Here are some pictures to prove it.....