I have been having dreams lately about going back to work…I know it’s coming to that time again where I have to consider making cash money in preparation for my hopefully permanent early retirement (as in that life of luxury and a house). I am not sure how the discussions are going to go with upper level management. My voice is not as bad as it was originally but not phone worthy. When I went to see the otolaryngologist about the potential surgery he told me I needed to get an EMG to check out the integrity of the vocal nerves. It will require my blood thickening up to below 2.0 he said, since it was a procedure involving sticking needles in the throat and possibly damaging the chords if the blood was too thin. I have to work with my cardiologist’s nurse and maybe get some heparin shots to make my stroke chance that much less possible. Once that is done we will know whether or not this surgery is imminent or the nerves can regenerate themselves. If that is the case, it can take 12-18 months for them to regenerate. I have a feeling the nerves can do that, which makes working a little more complicated given it was all on the phone. Granted there are roles for me in the company that are not exclusively speaking, but I am nervous to have the meeting where they hear my laryngitis-y voice. They have been paying for the company share of the health insurance for 8 months, but still. Which means, my little friend Anne, don’t speak a word about any of this. If for some reason the test comes back as a no dice, they will not regenerate, then I have the surgery where they shoe-lift my chords to greater audibility and I have speech therapy for a while to get used to it. I wish it were a bit easier, but still. I can say I have had a pretty decent time reliving my life as if it were 1992 again, which was the last summer I had without working full time at a job. I had a paper route but it was much easier to navigate my summer time then. I was 14, and my whole life seemed magical and sparkly ahead of me.

Lately I have become somewhat scared to my short term memory loss at points. I was warned about it, but it makes me feel like my future might involve some major memory loss and I don’t want to go out like that. I am hoping I have the balls to end it if it comes down to me forgetting basic human stuff, like if I ate and my own name. My dreams seem kind of apocalyptic in regards to my own life sometimes and intersect with my real life happenings on occasion scaring the shit out of me with this deja-vu like prediction. Sometimes I even feel like I have a thin string’s worth of hold on my own daily realizations and life. If I do lose it all (my conscious life and knowledge) I hope someone loves me enough to let me go. Or let myself go. Back in 1995 when I was sick my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and my grandfather in his anger, wanted to shoot her with the shotgun. And I thought then of how shitty it would be to die with no memories, and I hoped someone would exterminate my life on this plane before that happened. And then I developed my container theory since death seemed imminent for me. And I realized that it made more sense for me to consider the brain to be a circuit board. And when something was cut the energy or memories couldn’t travel the same way. But they were still there, trapped in the bad circuitry of a broken board. And when the electricity was permanently cut, (you die) everything gets released…because it was always there, but it had no way to be expressed on a bad circuit board.

Even still, I wouldn’t want other people to have me go out forgetting basic stuff. And I want to go out smiling, not because I am retarded, but because I know everything will be okay.