My 3 Month Anniversary!

Wow! I can't believe it's been 3 months since my AN surgery. Yet, it seems like it's been forever. None of this was in my plans for my life. Course, none of the last couple of years was in my plans. Even so, I'm still here. I'm a survivor!

Six months ago, I was job hunting. I was laid off from my job of 17 years last April and had still not found another. I was broke. I'd lost the home that I had lovingly designed and built a few years before. My retirement was gone. I was living with my daughter and family in a small town in Nebraska and drawing unemployment.

Five months ago, I was working. I'd found a job at Hewlett-Packard in West Lafayette, Indiana. It was a dream job...more money than I'd ever made before. They were training me on their system. It didn't matter that my computer languages and programming skills were outdated.

Four months ago, I'd been laid off again. Our whole training class of 30 people had been laid off the Monday after we completed our training. Two days later, I'd seen an ENT about the noise in my left ear. A week later, I'd had an MRI and had an appointment to see a neurosurgeon. I had been diagnosed with an Acoustic Neuroma...a brain tumor! I was scared to death.

Three months ago...I had my tumor removed. I went into surgery knowing the risks...knowing that when I came out of surgery, I would be deaf in my left ear, the left side of my face would be paralyzed, and I'd have problems with my balance. All, hopefully temporary. I could go back to work in 6-8 weeks.

Two months ago, I was facing the reality of the aftermath of surgery. No way was I going back to work so soon. Everything I had expected, the deafness, the facial paralysis, and the balance issues, had all come true. No one told me about the ongoing headaches, nausea, and 'wonky head'. I never expected to have to use a walker. I never realized that I would become depressed and have anxiety attacks. I've learned lots of new things such as there are 4 nerves that goe through my inner ear structure. One, of course, is the auditory nerve which controls whether I can hear or not. Another is the 7th facial nerve which controls the muscles in my face and my taste buds. The remaining nerves are my vestibular nerves which control my sense of balance. They are the ones that make me sick to my stomach when they are overworked. They are also the ones that cause me to 'drift' to one side or the other when I walk and make others think I've had too much to drink.

One month ago, I was back living at my daughter's in Nebraska. I'm drawing short-term disability through Hewlett-Packard and praying that I can keep drawing it until I'm able to go back to work. It's a month to month thing. I can't get a place of my own because I have no idea if I'll be getting disability, unemployment, or neither. I don't know if I have medical insurance from month to month.

Today, I have no idea what the future holds. I pray that I can keep my disability and medical insurance for as long as I need it. I go to physical therapy twice a week to work on my balance. I no longer use the walker, although I miss it when I start drifting and can't pull myself out of it. I still can't hear out of my left ear and my face is still paralyzed. Neither show any improvement. It will take time...months, possibly a year or more, before they begin to improve, if they ever do.

The biggest problem I face is my 'wonky head'. I don't know how to describe it. I have a headache all the time. The only time it goes away is when I take hydrocodone for it. The headache comes back immediately the minute the hydrocodone wears off. There's a lot of pressure in my head. It feels like it's going to explode. It also feels like someone put a huge rubber band around my head. The pressure is unreal. My brain is fuzzy...sort of like the early stages of drunkeness, but without the buzz. I space off into other worlds almost constantly. I panic at the thought of talking on the phone...of having to call someone other than a close friend or family. The noise in my ear is overwhelming. Sometimes, it's so loud that it drowns out what I can hear in my good ear. Busy restaurants, background music, kids playing, laughing, and yelling...they all drive me nuts. I can't bear to have all that noise in my life. I hide in my room most of the time to avoid it.

I don't know when I can go back to work. My 'wonky head' prevents me from staying on task and concentrating on anything for any length of time. My left eye doesn't work as well as it should since it doesn't close properly. It doesn't track the same as my right eye. The iris seems larger than the other and my vision is blurred. I don't know if that's because of the ointment I have to keep in it to prevent the cornea from drying out or if there is something actually wrong with it. I'll find out tomorrow when I see an opthomologist. Until my eyes start working together, I can't use a computer for any length of time, nor can I read very well. There's no way that I can return to my career as a software developer until I can overcome the 'wonky head' and the hearing and vision problems.

Where will I be a month from now? Probably the same place I am today. Unless something drastically changes, I really don't expect anything to change until after the first of next year. Maybe it will never change. I have to have hope. I have to trust that God will provide...that He will lead me where He wants me to go. He's taken care of me so far. If I hadn't taken the job in Indiana, I don't think I would have even known I had a brain tumor. Everything happens for a reason. I simply have to wait to see what He has in store for me next.

Wow! My Very Own Blog!

I've never had a blog before. I'm really not sure what to do with it. The dreamer in me says I'll be out here posting bits and pieces about my life every day, but the realist in me knows that I may do that for a while, but will probably grow bored with it all and lose total interest in it. I never wrote in my diary as a young girl either.

I do like to write. It's my preferred form of communication. I have a habit of saying things first and thinking about them later. Don't think that doesn't lead to lots of guilt trips. When I write, I can go back and edit out the things I didn't really want to say, add in what I've forgotten to write, and rephrase those initial statements that don't quite say what I meant to say.

Writing allows me to go on and on forever and ever about anything I want to say. God help anyone who reads this as it's a sign of what might evolve into a daily novel of nothingness.