What am I up to now? (3-Month Updates Onward)

Just for fun, I'll keep recording how my symptoms are and give y'all the big updates about what's going on in my life these next few months. I figured I'd have this post cover updates from the day after my 3-month office visit and onward!

Here is the headache key again, where unless otherwise noted, "pain meds" on this diagram means 400 mg ibuprofen :)

POD 98

We got a good bit of snow this day (for the south), so I went out and made a snow(wo)man. I actually got pretty tuckered out rolling her through the yard. Everyone say hello to Sally! 

POD 100

Happy 100 days post-op everyone!! I celebrated with cake, delicious Mexican food, and an episode of my current favorite show Severance!

POD 101

I went to the gym and ran an entire mile (on and off) as my warm-up, which is crazy. After my workout I actually felt great, which is a welcome change. Once I started getting sick in summer 2023, I felt worse every time I worked out. A "quick run" could lead to a debilitating spike in my head pain that lasted days. But this day, my hair was up in a high ponytail, I was exerting, and I felt amazing! I’m going to try not to push myself too much just in case, but I’m overjoyed.

They also had this super sweet display up by the front door of the gym. I've never seen a rare disease awareness display before, so it was really cool to see on such a big day for me. My dad added my name. 💜

POD 103

This was my first day going for a run outside!! The weather was perfect, it was 60 degrees and I ran about two miles on and off. After that, I did 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill to get my neck PT in.

POD 104

I got my wisdom teeth out on this day since I have been meaning to get it done before going back to school and my neurosurgeon cleared me for everything! Brain surgery really makes recovery from everything else feel like a breeze! 

Note: Days 104-109 are color-coded based on how much head pain I was experiencing, not how much ibuprofen or acetaminophen (abbreviated: apap) I was taking since I was primarily medicating for my tooth extraction not head pain.

POD 109

This was the first day I did what felt like a full home workout routine! I ran two miles, walked two miles, and did a mini abs, biceps, and triceps circuit which was so fun!

POD 117

This was my first full solo day back at school! My dad came up with me a couple of days before to help me reset my apartment and give it a little refresh so I could get some of the previous sick vibes out of there. I have things on my wall now, it looks like someone's permanent residence instead of a girl who moved directly from a dorm into an apartment (which is absolutely what it was when I first moved in). This is me after returning from my first grocery store trip. We stay crushing these iADLs!!

POD 118

This was my first day back on campus since leaving for brain surgery! The last time I was here, I dropped off my OR scrubs in the middle of the night because I didn't want to explain anything to anyone I knew. 

To get used to being on campus, I scheduled a few appointments this day. I had a bit of a biological reaction at first, but I have hyperhidrosis even when I’m totally mellow, so that didn't knock me off my square. A very welcome surprise was I mainly felt excited to be back instead of afraid. For the longest time, I felt like I didn’t really belong at school because I was hiding how sick I was, and I don’t like hiding anything. 

As a chronic oversharer (see: this entire blog), hiding that I felt like I was dying was like dragging this massive weight behind me that was attached to my skull. I dragged it through every social interaction, every patient visit, every everything. My sickness cheapened every experience so much that my life didn't feel like it was mine anymore. 

Being back now, I have the same giddy feeling I had when I first toured the school after getting accepted. Especially after running my typical loop (which I thought I’d never do again), and visiting all my favorite places (which I also thought I’d never do again). My life is mine again. 

POD 119

I had Basic Life Support CPR training since I was due to complete it before resuming rotations. It’s a super basic clinical skills training (as the name would suggest), but completing it felt huge for me because this was my first clinical experience since surgery! Just a few months ago I didn’t think I’d be doing anything clinical ever again, so another win!

POD 133

This was my second day of orientation training for my rotations! It was hosted downtown and took four hours, which I would have had a dismal time doing pre-surgery. These past couple of days have been a lot of running around and getting things squared away for returning to school in May, and it honestly feels really good to be busy again. Even in moments where I have gotten temporarily overwhelmed, I remind myself what a privilege it is to get to worry about such goofy stuff.

Instead of the things I could have worried about if there were certain complications with my surgery, or not even having the mental capacity to worry if there were certain complications after my surgery, I get to worry about getting a good score on my silly training exam. I’m going to keep this mindset as much as possible during rotations. I am here to learn, have fun, and gain new skills. All this (living independently again, being back at school, even just sitting by a window and being able to tolerate sounds again) is an insanely surreal opportunity that I was almost certain I’d never get to have again. 

POD 134

When I was super sick, there were days I could barely get up to eat. If I did, most food was canned, frozen, and/or from a box. In recovery, I also ate so many saltine crackers to help with my nausea that we were purchasing them in packs of 500. Since it was difficult for me to look at this stuff and I was dreading eating them anyway, I donated it all because I wanted someone who didn't have that same adverse reaction to them to actually enjoy them. This felt like the end of an era and it is so exciting to think that in this new phase of my life, I’ll be out of bed long enough to cook meals and go to work! 

POD 140

This was the first day I started looking at study materials again for school! I started on some Step 2 UWorld questions and made some Anki cards based on my incorrects. 

Exciting but sorta alarming news: It feels like I’m studying with someone else’s brain. I could remember a concept that I reviewed a week later. I would do a practice question and sometimes could remember learning that concept during Dedicated over a year ago. I could mentally picture some charts or diagrams I learned from my second year of med school. 

A year ago, I could review topics thoroughly (with practice questions and exam review and notecards) for hours and not remember ever learning that subject the next day. So it’s absolutely insane that my brain can do this stuff now. I always knew my brain worked in an unorthodox way, but I just developed workarounds and used humor to make it seem like less of a big deal. No one has any idea how much I did not know what was going on in the first 24 years of my life. 

There have been more times than I can count when people have had to tell me something more than once because I didn't remember and they would get offended and tell me I wasn't listening to them. But the most frustrating thing is that I was listening, I just wasn't recalling. I heard them when they spoke to me, but I couldn’t retrieve that memory once I had it. Or maybe it was never encoded in the first place. I would write things down on scrap papers and tape them to the inside of my kitchen cabinets so I would see them a bunch and hopefully not forget them (~50% effectiveness on this one). I would transcribe the main points of casual conversations in my Notes app so I could ask a person how that thing went for them later on, and I would forget that note even existed right after I wrote it (<50% effectiveness). It was almost like there was a cork separating my brain from my spinal cord. Surprise!

I tried to tell people it was never personal, my brain was that way with everything. I needed a GPS to get to the grocery store on the same route we had driven for over 15 years in my hometown. Memory match card games and those icebreakers where you have to remember details about the people you met were the stuff of my nightmares.

My brain is still mine, and I still probably do not have a memory anywhere near as good as most of the population. I am still probably going to forget most things, but I feel like I have a way better shot at remembering things now.

I’m not going to push myself too hard with studying to make sure I enjoy this time off before getting fully back into the grind, but it makes me feel less worried about rotations by getting my feet wet with questions again. Plus, it’s really fun to feel like I am in control of my brain.

POD 144

This was a HUGE day for me! This was the second day of a two-day music festival and I was fully present the entire day! It was in the high eighties and sunny for a good bit of the day, and I was outside for over 9 hours and standing almost the entire time with really loud (fantastic) music. 

I felt pretty sick the night before because I definitely overexerted and didn’t hydrate enough. So I brought some Pedialyte and drank over 3x as much water. I had a headache throughout the day but ibuprofen really helped (which it never did pre-surg) and I had so much fun (my favorite performances were Lil Wayne, J.I.D., EARTHGANG, and J. Cole).

Fun side note: I was able to remember my festival locker number and combo after only viewing the info once, which I never could have done even at my healthiest pre-surg. Brain fog can go screw!

It is so cool to start testing the limits of what my body can do again. To live life so fully and able-bodied less than five months after my surgery is surreal, this day goes in the wins column too!