So yesterday was a good day. I rested in bed, did a little tidying, slept, and had a lovely visit from Shawn, who brought some yummy nuts from the market. We sat and talked on my bed for a while, it felt a bit like being at school and college again, using one's bed as a platform for talking, and then we went and drank some exquisite Chinese tea that Shawn's parents had chosen for me - tea that brews in less than 10 seconds, and you can get up to 6 rounds out of the one sachet. I'll have to ask what it was called. We discovered that the savoury nut and seed mix goes very well with Blue Castello Cheese....very well indeed. It was a thoroughly hedonistic afternoon.
And Friday night was great too! Umit had come up to stay, I'd had a good sleep in the afternooon, and another one after an early tea, so when I woke at 7pm I felt fresh and happy. David had made his first batch of pancake batter at 530 that morning, but I'd gone to sleep before we could cook it. I felt like partying, we had batter ready to go (half cornflour, half tapioca flour because I'd run out of regular), and there were oranges and lemons to use, and the Crepes Suzettes we'd had at the revolving restaurant in Hobart were so nice.... I set Nathaniel to juicing 4 oranges and 2 lemons, while I cooked 6 lovely light crepes on two frypans. We all sat down and watched Mamma Mia and ate our crepes, and I felt like I was finally spending a Friday night the way I've been wanting to for the past 10 years. I felt like the old me again.
For a long time, I've felt a slight mental fog in my head, like there's something distracting me, holding me back, slowing me down, making it harder for me to think clearly. I thought it was just a result of 11 years chronic sleep disturbance from David, plus the effects of Hashimoto' hypothyroidism after 2008, plus recurrent sinus headaches, plus being stressed for a number of significant reasons. Dad developing normal pressure hydrodcephalus in the late 1990s but not being diagnosed and treated until 2004, and then his slow decline until last year. Ben's dad ending up in a nursing home in 2005, and his mum coming to live with us so that we could take her to see him each day, the stress of seeing Ben's dad deteriorate over 3 years, and the amazing, selfless devotion that Hannah showed him. The stress of trying to be a good mum and have fun with two young boys while worrying for and caring about older loved ones. The intense frustration that people with brain disorders have been neglected and continued to be neglected in this country while people with mental health conditions can access publicly funded clnical psychology services since 2006 - yet for someone with a known or suspected brain condition, there are not enough neuropsychologists, training programs are under threat, and there is not a Medicare item to cover a neuropsychological assessment. If you have a mental health condition, you can see a cliinical psychologist for 10 sessions, worth about $1300 at the bulk billed rate. If you have a known or suspected brain disorder, and NEED to see a clinicial neuropsycholgist, you either have to pay out of pocket, get seen through one of the scarce public resources, or don't get seen at all, unless you're covered by DVA or a third parrty insurerer. The injustice of the omission of neuropsychology from Medicare has been an ongoing issue for me, and one thing where the passion it stirs has not diminished my reasoning abilities. No, thinking about the last ten years, I suspect that my parietal tumour has been slowly growing and sapping my emotional energy, making it hard for me to keep positive, making me more sensitive to criticism from Ben, but I just attributed it all to sad things happening in life, and lack of sleep. Of course, I worried about my brain, but my fMRI research scans in 2001 looked normal, and my recurrent sinus headaches, which had started in 1997, always went away. Well, after a week or two of antibiotics, sometimes.
It will be interesting to find the CD with the fMRI scan, just to see if there's anything in the parietal lobe. Contrast isn't used for fMRIs, so it wouldn't have picked up anything obvious, but all conrol scans were checked by a radiologist for "incidentalomas" - those spots you find when you'e not particularly looking for anything. Actually, thinking about the scan now, I remember someone remarking that my right parietal lobe was rather well-developed - I remember it seemed a little plumper than the left, though the ventricles were equal. I intepreted it as a sign of my rather good visuopatial abilities...and never asked anyone about it - there was nothing to see, nothing reported.
So maybe the tumour has been growing there for a number of years, and would have declared itself this year anyway.
I'm so glad it's out, and I hope it never comes back.
I've changed the name of this blog, again, after remembering something an astrologer and Tarot reader told me in 1994. She said that I have an incredible capacity to manifest things, which I just intepreted as the usual tarot astrologer mumbo-jumbo that one would expect in Paddington in 1994. However, given this year's experience of manifesting things that I want, though not usually in the way I wanted, I thought a new title for the blog was crucial. So it's moved from #1 Neuroboob, to #2Neuroboob: the story of a neuropsych who defeated breast and brain cancer in one year, to #3 Neurobooob: loving and living well for many decades after having breast and brain tumours in 2013.
I hope that's specific enough for a universe that seems to want to help me get a year off work (breast cancer) get the chance to move my career towards advocacy for people with brain disorders (by giving me my own); get my house painted and gutters, fascia etc repaired (an excellent, honest, builder who I'd consulted about doing a renovation is able to get started next week), and for me to be able to have people drop by and visit me at home (I can't drive, and walking wears me out, so I'm enjoying lots of visits already). Wow, I'll even be able to indulge my love of baking, to feed all the visitors and children. I think I might be onto something with the blue castello and spicy nuts mix....
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| "Guardian of Feathered Creatures" by Lina Kurtschencko The first painting that Ben and I have ever agreed on. Strangely, most of the art that Ben has bought involves birds., so he had to relate to this one! |
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| "Windswept sisters, Mackay" (1985). One of my less good HSC paintings, the sisters were a genteel pair who sat near us on a five day rail trip from Brisbanc to Cairns in 1982. This painting and our new one seem quite happy together in my room, and the Guardian in the new painting reminds me of them. |
