So after my stroke scare a few Saturdays ago, I got a little reality shot into my veins, really kind of shoved into my face a little too forcefully for my general easy-going demeanor. I used to call it living my life while many of you would call it ignorance, and you would be right, because I am a little stubborn when it comes to certain things. And by stubborn I mean stupid.

I got an email that Monday morning after my incident with details on what it means to suffer a TIA and how it can precede real strokes which could have the opportunity to really do some damage. As in that warning could have been for an even bigger stroke which could really be catastrophic. I started to think of how shitty it would be to be trapped inside your own body and not able to tell people you were there, like I felt in some ways on Saturday. Being aware and not having the words able to come out of my mouth how I intended was a new kind of voicelessness I really want to avoid.

Even two days later, I was still feeling a little off center of my comfort zone. Meaning I knew something was wrong but hesitated telling those around me my fears. The thing is, when you’re sick, people tend to abandon ship, and this is not to say the people around me are the types of people to abandon ship, but that’s not the point. I didn’t even want to be in a position to test that theory out because I thought I could think it all away. I could will my brain to act normal again and not short the wires when it came down to speaking what I was thinking. So I chose the best teaching hospital in Colorado, which was not the closest hospital, but it was the best, touting having the 4 best heart failure doctors in the state. I don’t have heart failure, at all, but I did expect they would be well-equipped to treat me.

I will give you a little synopsis of my experience with the hospital since I am slow going with all of this updating as of late. I was admitted on Monday June 3rd and was released Thursday June 7th. I am still waiting for the records so I can include it in the memoir I am writing, but this is the general outline of the party I was that week.

You didn’t have a stroke. We just think you were stressed out.

Test.

We were wrong. You had a stroke, actually and we saw another aneurysm.

Better test.

We don’t see another aneurysm but we do see your carotid artery is a little bubbled up where the graft meets the tissue.

Better test.

We think maybe your heart valve isn’t big enough for your body. We think we need to repair it.

Still two more better tests.

Your heart valve is actually working better than we thought. You just have weird anatomy we have never seen before.

I would love to tell you I walked out of this whole experience and felt amazing and inspired, and in certain ways I of course feel gratitude that I am okay. But I am also humbled by own body and feel like I have a bizarre time bomb once again on delay this time. After all of those years afraid of it exploding in my chest and then getting the security of thinking it was all done and nothing bad would happen to my heart or any of the thoracic anatomy, I now know a little different. I have weird anatomy that most people have never seen before (save my own doctors). I will also tell you that a simple phone call to my old hospital to talk to someone who knew my anatomy (like say any one of my many doctors) would have saved me and the people around me from the yo-yo boomerang that was my diagnosis most of the time I was there.

And that head that was floating in the clouds dreaming had to ground herself back down to the ground, again.