So.
I wish I could say that this was easy to write, or the most happy thing ever, but, let’s be honest. While most all of this will be skewed to the positive, sometimes the most positive thing there is is honesty.
Later, when I get you ‘caught up’, I’ll be able to talk about some of the stuff that is positive – all the self-care I’ve built into my day, having had to carve that time out, all the things I’ve learned and probably accept better.
For now though, I have to admit this bit – and the place this will be in the book, is bleak. Not as bleak as it could be though.
Just to give some possibly ‘important’ spoilers. I didn’t have a stroke, all my brain scans are normal (for me), no bleeds, or obvious organic degradation. My eyes are also fine. I have, in fact, landed with reading glasses, while my prescription of five years has barely changed.
The story doesn’t start there though. It starts on a late October Thursday afternoon. I’d apparently told my partner that i thought I could be getting a urine infection or maybe a kidney infection. I’d come off of six b12 injections over two weeks in late September, my flu and Pfizer Covid vaccine in early October, maybe a week after my last b12 shot that I’d had, and then, an iron infusion.
Two days after, feeling rough, I went for a nap. I know all this now because I’ve had it all explained to me. And that’s probably one of the first points I want to make. I know NOW because I’ve either found a diary that I kept (it’s why there’s a whole segment on this site called ‘memory preservation and all that jazz’ coming soon) or my partner, children or friends have told me. So, I am very much an unreliable and influenced narrator. I know only what I’ve found, and I think a lot of what I know shows how little I communicated with others, and, conversely, how often I was alone with my own thoughts.
October 23rd though. Woke up feeling a bit grotty. I think, based on my Facebook and comments from my beloved, I’d been up the night before with either said UTI or kidney thing. I went for a nap, as I sometimes do when I’m really tired. I woke up and thought it was 2009. Most of all though, it felt like something exploded in my head. A massive thunderclap headache that I never, ever thought I’d ever experience.
Headaches, not time machine, and I’m still not back
I think, looking back to those first few days when I was really sick, and really confused, that it’s hard to explain what was going on. It was a Thursday, so we should have been at LudoSport, something I’d apparently been missing some of because the B12 shots had kicked my butt. I’ll talk later about the fear and all of that other stuff that hit, but in those first few days, it was almost as if my brain decided it wasn’t going to deal with anything more complex than the problem in front of me. I had been prepping for Nanowrimo, and had a countdown on my phone, but it took six attempts to even open it (though, when I stopped focussing, and went by…let’s call it muscle memory, I did it without realising. I knew how to use my phone, but curiously for me, I was completely disinterested in my tech. I’d been handed a Steamdeck as an early birthday present, and it basically sat, doing nothing, for the first two weeks after the issues started.
I remember though, very vividly, waking in a bed I didn’t recognise, with things I DID recognise around me. My favourite jewellery box, my pewter dragon. A book, which later turned out to be one of my Bujos, open next to me, with a splatter of ink and a half finished sentence (I still haven’t finished that thought). My handwriting, so I knew I was somewhere I was supposed to be. I got up, looked at the time and panicked. I had to get dressed and go get the kids from school. Except… I couldn’t find my clothes, I didn’t recognise the layout of the house. I was…confused.
Confusion reigns
I went up and down the two floors for an indeterminate period of time, upset because I didn’t recognise the silver band I was wearing. My brain started conjuring all sorts of things – had I lost my partner, was I married to someone else now. How could that be when I clearly remembered lying down with him and Kushka the night before and now, here I was.
That was the second thing I realised. The tabby I eventually saw wasn’t Kushka. Absolutely bereft, I eventually went back to the middle floor of our house (we have a converted two story house, and we sleep in the converted attic), heard David’s voice, and knocked on the door. He said I muttered something about not feeling well, I’m sorry to interrupt his work from home, could he go get the kids though.
My partner was obviously confused, and concerned. He put me back to bed, and gently told me that I was confused. I kept apparently asking for Kushka, and worrying about my now adult children. My daughter, back from uni and her boyfriend’s for the day, came up to see me, and my first reaction to both of them was ‘what happened?’. I recognised David, mostly, but it was a bit of a system shock to see my daughter the first time. And that the cat I was looking for wasn’t with us any more.
Apparently, I’d done something similar before, in a confusional migraine caused this before, and usually it clears up after a night’s sleep.
(spoiler alert. It didn’t). Had I known then what I know now, I’d have gone to the doctor that day. Instead, I went to sleep.
My next post will be about the ‘middle bit’.
Sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the next part! Thanks so much for writing about this highly unusual situation and giving us a glimpse into what it was like from the inside.