MR. LUCKY

Like I've been saying, I'm a very lucky man. Today the neurosurgeon agreed. He told me he'd always remember me as a very lucky patient, maybe his luckiest. The way my particular problem manifested itself made it pretty unusual, and it seemed almost miraculous that it hadn't spread to the rest of my brain and that almost five weeks after surgery I'm on the path to being totally recovered.

I'm typing this after a long day. I'm tired and I'm making mistakes I have to correct pretty regularly, but nowhere near as many as I was making just days ago. And only a few weeks ago it would have taken me a half hour or much more to write a short post (mostly rewrite, over and over again to correct the errors).

Pretty much all my faculties are working almost normally. I do get tired more easily, and I still mistype too many words when I write, I still feel overwhelmed around too many people or too much stimuli.

But I can read and write (even if not as much or for as long) and I can listen to most music and watch most movies and TV shows and appreciate more than ever the art I love and most of all the people I love, which turns out to be even more, a lot more, than I even knew.

And despite the problems that this challenge created and the ones that were there before the brain surgery and still are or the new ones that might, well probably will, present themselves, as I keep saying—I'm an awfully lucky guy.

(Just watched two black-and-white 1940s Hollywood flicks on TCM—CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT and HOLIDAY AFFAIR—that probably evoked that last phrase, or the language of it, and made me smile a lot and be grateful for all that there is in this world and life to supply us with so much joy, especially this time of the year, despite the sometimes sad memories and current difficulties and probable struggles to come.)