THE NOT SO BIG SLEEP

I was about to post last night on the topic of sleep since the brain surgery, about how as I've already mentioned, I've been sleeping much better than pre-op leading me to conclude that the growth in my brain had something to do with my constantly waking up several times in the usual night.

But the day got away from me and other things intruded to keep me from writing that post. And then I woke up at 2AM this morning thinking about one of these things, bothered by the problems in the life of a loved one, and ended up not getting back to sleep until 6AM with the alarm set for an hour later.

So, I guess what I conclude from that is that I can't make any conclusions about my sleeping patterns just yet.

PS: Had a great discussion with a fellow brain surgery survivor today about our various symptoms and recovery and progress and etc. Totally fascinating for me, to see some similarities in the struggles we've had in recovering from the brain intrusion and some distinctions in the ways they're manifested.

For instance she has no trouble with writing, but when speaking does the kinds of things that occur when I'm writing (substituting a word that starts with the same sound—"hijacker" for "hitchhiker" etc. But similar levels of clarity and gratitude and realizing what's important and rearranging priorities, etc. But also how surprised people are at how "good" or "normal" we look and seem. I suspect that's mostly because unliked operations (that's an error I'll leave uncorrected since it's so interesting, of course I meant "unliked"—unbelievable, I did it again, which often happens) in which any other part of the body is opened up, especially anywhere on the torso, opening up the skull doesn't interfere with almost anything (like for instance having an operation around your abdomen would involve all kinds of organs and muscle and tendons etc. which would take much longer to heal etc.). So sometimes it's almost like folks want you to be as okay as you appear to be and don't understand that you've changed, at least for now, in ways no other operation would cause, because how our minds work is about who we are, much more so than how our shoulder works or our appendix or some internal organ, even the heart, though the impact of heart operations can be life changing and even personality changing, but not thought process changing, if you see what I mean.