Brain Damage

Over the past two weeks, I have been enduring a series of studies and interviews at the hospital, as the specialists try to put together the pieces of a puzzle as to what happened to my mind during the last surgery.

I have gone with the idea that I suffered brain damage.  I KNOW what is missing in my brain - everything, I KNOW what used to be there because I have brief flashes of recall, I also know that I can retain nothing in short term memory today.

Sigh .....

So, the specialists have two schools of thought:
First is that the gas they used worked too well on me and broke whatever the "memory channel" is.  It seems to be a poorly understood process by which things can be put into and taken back out of your brain's memory.  And there is no fix for this.

Second, is that if my diabetes soared, which there is no proof of as my sugars have been 100% upper end of normal for 10 years!  With a high sugar level comes a form of dementia.  :(  No do not like that idea, but there is no fix for that either.

So, I think the diabetes idea, as well as, the sleep study idea are just money wasters for further testing.  I know the diabetes idea is bad because I have never been out of dietary control.  And the sleep study is just them shooting in the dark - I can sleep anywhere, anytime, in any position!  Plus I do sleep well when cats are not fighting over me!

And I really do not like the idea of dementia at all!  Father had dementia after his first stroke and it only got worse with each succeeding stroke!  Oh he could function fine but his thinking as far from  normal.  I should not complain, the only reason I got to know him was after that first series of strokes and he decided it might be nice to meet his grandchildren!  On that trip he allowed us 10 minutes on our last day before we had to fly back home.  Well, the kids had fun - other than the heat and my irritability towards the end of an entire month of being put off!

I really do not want to be like that!

But it got my mind working.  I have had four stents put in my heart across 2013 and 2014.  I have retained some memories of that time.  If my brain was oxygen starved, then would I have behaved in a less than Kris like manner?  Certainly, the years leading up to my forced retirement make me wonder.  I knew something was wrong but not what.  I am living it - I can't see it!  I also knew my heart was acting weird but not why going back to 2007, not heart attack symptoms, just weird weaknesses and dizziness's.  The final stent at the end of 2014, really cleared my mind up briefly - until the six surgeries made a mess of me in 2015.  And "odd" things happen around me I notice but have no response to.  Friends delete me on FaceBook and when I ask why, they claim I unfriended them.  I can even go through the activities log and there is nothing there on my account!  So, I know I am on the receiving end - not crazy yet .... Right?  And I can read through my messaging chatter and see my own confusion - and yet when I read what friends wrote, I can see they are saying two entirely different things - and then claim that I am confused.  I do not get it.  I am not sure that old Kris could have gotten it either ...

So, I think I sit here beginning to understand that old Kris was dying, his brain starving for oxygen and then the gases got him.  It could explain behaviors that have left me appalled, it could explain everything except becoming fully human and beginning to learn about life ..... and in there discovering beauty I will never be able to share .....

Or, I could just be brain damaged and now a drooling idiot.  But, if being an idiot means I have seen and understand beauty as God intended it, well, then I am so much the richer.  And though beauty faded away, and it is just a memory of beauty I will cherish and hold .....


And finally I had lunch yesterday with a nursing manager and told her the tale.  She was fascinated and wanted to probe my brain to see if it is still in there!  LOL  We are good friends.
Apparently it is well known that anyone whom had a systemic staph infection is going to have suffered brain damaged!
Dang!  She said it so calmly and abstractly.

So, she agrees brain damage is probably the result of the staph, not the hospital or the doctors.
Hmmmmm
Well, it gives me something to build from/on and not to worry too much about the next surgery!
Thank you God for that piece of information - just when I am freaked out ...