POST BRAIN OP CLUB

So the other night after the movies, I ran into a woman I know who had brain surgery around the same time I did, a little over three years ago. It was like meeting a fellow member of a secret club.

We moved to a place where we could talk and catch up, and though her operation was more serious and the impact more serious we shared a lot. One of the things it was a relief to share with her was our common experience of people being tired of hearing us bring up our brain operations or using them as an explanation (or excuse in other's minds I'd guess, and our own sometimes), like they want us to get over it already.

And along with that, people often say they experience the same thing we're experiencing when we can't think of the right word, or use the wrong one, or just get things wrong, when we know from the before/after experience that what we used to feel in our minds when we couldn't remember the word we were searching for and what often happens now when our minds just go completely blank for a moment or longer are distinctly different.

There was more, the little quirky individualized things we experienced that we hadn't before (my most famous was not finding Meryl Streep a woman I would ever feel attracted to before the operation and still after it, except whenever I see her on TV since the op and stop to watch, in which case I get all gooey feeling like a kid with a crush or a young man with spring fever)

Anyway, it was nice to talk about these things with someone understands. As I suspect it always is with any trait or experience or common history etc.