Hammering in my Head
It was just another normal day. The last Tuesday before Thanksgiving (yay), an easy day at school... nothing to it. I parked in the front of the school so I could lug in my million cans for the food pantry. I dropped them off, took my lunch down to the fridge, and wrote the date on the board. I sat down at my desk to google "holidays November bizarre" so I could figure out what crazy holiday to draw on the board, and suddenly, it hit me.
I was looking at one of my bulletin boards across the room, when my eyes got blurry. The right one was worse than the left, but both were hard to see out of. Around the corners of my eyes were colors - a bright kaleidoscope of reds and blues and yellows moving quickly, throbbing in and out, in and out. I closed my eyes, but the colors swam against the black. I kept myself calm, but I knew something was wrong. I sat and waited for the colors to go away, but they just got more intense. My head was beginning to cloud. I found myself trying to form coherent thoughts, but only bits and pieces floated through my head. Part of me was wondering if the colors would ever go away, if I could live life like this.
I tried to work through the pain. I opened up a blank email and attempted to compose a quick letter to a fellow teacher. It was hard to make the words come out, and I could barely see the screen, so I didn't trust what it said. I gave up. I tried to stand to see if a change in pressure would help, but all I could do was begin to raise myself before a flood of nausea would hit me.
After a few minutes of this - 10? 20? - there was a knock on my classroom door. Bev, the teacher across the hall, walked in. As soon as she saw me, she asked what was wrong. I looked at her slowly. "It's... the weirdest thing," I said. "There are colors everywhere." Alarmed, she walked towards me. Then it hit me. "Maybe I need to take off my hair clip," I said. I reached up and pulled the clip out. Immediately, the colors began to fade.
It took the whole morning, but by lunch, I was back to normal. I'm assuming that the hair clip cut off my shunt, which, coupled with the impending weather change, cause fluid to build up in my brain. That cut off many of my brain's sensory functions until I released the hair clip. The whole incident left me shaken. My brain... it's why I don't really drink, why I never use drugs. I lost control of it when I was 16, and I refuse to lose control of it again. I'm picky about using painkillers. Sometimes I'm scared to fall asleep because I can't control what happens when I'm asleep. I'm afraid to fall in love because I can't control my emotions. I know I can't plan out everything in the world, but I can avoid situations that are risky.
No one understand this. Well - I suppose other people who have had brain injuries understand this. My actions often seem irrational and emotional and they're chalked up to me being a woman, or a bitch, or a sociopath (my favorite!)... but really, my intense emotions are because I went through something that few people have to go through, and because that experience affected me. My emotions are due to the fact that I have to be in control of most situations. It's scary to not be able to think. It's scary to not be able to figure out why you see certain things that others don't see.
Anyway, I really didn't want to write about the brain topic again, but it was kind of a significant happening in my day. Incidents like this make me happy for my brain, my use of my hands, my deductive reasoning. I guess it'll be something else for me to think about when I compose my happy Thanksgiving list.
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