I had this kind of fun today
and now I have one of these! Yay
Waking up from surgery was really weird this time. They did not put whatever happy drugs into my IV as the ankle doctors did. That was a happy fun waking up.
This time I was so shaky and not because I was cold. My emotions were unstable. I needed to know everything. I tried to relax my mind but it was misfiring all over the place and I 'd shake and cry...
But the interesting and kind of cool thing was I knew exactly why.
"my right prefrontal cortex is damaged and that's what is happening" I told the nurse.
"My Autonomic Nervous System is all out of whack and firing fight flight signals." I ask her if it is normal for people to get shaky like this. She says it is. But I know something about this is not normal or okay. It is uncontrollable and I feel like my body is experiencing a form of shock. I am telling the nurse what the prefrontal cortex does and why my reactions are related to that.
And even though I have a spinal block I can feel that my very low damaged disk in my back is unhappy. It usually gets that way if I lie flat on my back for too long. The nurse leaves for a moment. I have to adjust my body position to settle that disk, knowing that could help settle some of the nervous system stuff that is firing like crazy.
When the nurse returns she tells me I need to get back on my back and she helps me do that but also makes sure I have a pillow to support and she adjusts my bed to sit me up more.
I tell the nurse my brain is not handling this well and that we need to get it to settle down. The crying and shaking is out of control and it is scary. I try to calm it, and while that works on my psyche it just seems to send new shock waves through my physiological systems. I need something to calm it. My impulse control and mouth not up to par, I actually tell her this mess of my body is due to "jackass Dr. He" and "stupid Dr. Concussion" I feel this because they potentially caused more harm to the locations of my damaged brain by ignoring and denying what was happening and thus perpetually feeding these very responses, things similar to what is happening now; a broken system that is struggling to regulate, especially under stress. And they kept it going for far too long...* (see end note) I think I may have used the "f" word once or twice. But at least I did not rip out any IV's or try to get out of bed.
Nice Nurse gives me some sort of sedative, maybe Diprivan. She starts with a half dose. But has me take the second half about 10-15 minutes later as my bodies response is starting to look more and more like shock or a full blown panic attack. I keep asking questions. She tells me she will go over it later because I won't remember now.
But I remember. Second dose in, she allows me time to settle. The medication starts to work it's magic and my body and emotions start to come back to center. I'm leveling and when she thought I was sleeping, I was mostly not. I was settling and allowing the medication to work and allowing my body to settle. Your brain is part of your body too.
These mind altering medications are absolutely fascinating. And this was another rather fascinating experience.
I tell the nurse, "I really should be a case study."
I am not in a drugged like state after the medication. I am not sedated. I am simply settled, and back to the more accurate version of me. I am stable again and my nervous systems are settled. My mind is able to work in a calm and rational way again.
Home now, my husband observes once again, "You are so alert and fine." After both of his surgeries he was groggy and out of it. For days.
I don't seem to work that way. Even after giving birth to my two kids I was like, "okay, when can I go home," while my husband was wiped out- asleep in my hospital bed with the baby.
I am guessing I will get tired and my emotions will start to get to me again. But this little incident, so heightened and bizarre, yet I knew what was happening, I was able to identify it, communicate it, and I knew what I needed. The medication, amazing, brought me back to level rather quickly. Not sedated, but level.
I am so grateful for a nurse that listened and cared.
...I suppose it is not too surprising to find out that she has a daughter that suffered a stroke at age 18 and has endured some similar effects due to the lasting effects of the damage it caused.
...So once again, this is why I talk about it. :)
*A little later I ask her to send a report of this to the Neuroscience Institute, even though I know it is highly unlikely she will. But I want her to because of how it correlates with what I had tried to tell them and even with their own research -which according to them somehow did not apply to me, probably because they had opted to make me taboo instead.
Another note on this: while I am certain many may think, and I do to, "just get over it, quite tying it back to them." I sometimes can and I sometimes do, however, I live with the realities they denied everyday. I live with the rejection from the one place in the world where I really do belong and really could be a valuable asset. While I know, "the one place in the world" is not entirely true -there are others- they have actually done enough harm and sufficiently tainted my name and my records enough that I am now, something like blacklisted by other institutions and organizations that could otherwise easily be home to me.
The lady from the BIAU conference last year, -the one who claimed my attempts to converse with her, in ways that could help me understand were unethical- she is on the board. My attempts at conversation with her were not unethical, rather, to her, it was taboo. Which, we all know, is what is truly unethical. But no matter, she holds the power and all the cards and I am irrationally "unsafe" to her and the off vibes I have caught from others who have connections to her, my intuition suggests are related. I could be wrong, and I keep trying. But over the years I have gotten rather good at knowing when people are talking about me behind my back
... And I can tell you, it sure makes them uncomfortable when you try to address it directly with them. Which to me seems most reasonable, logical, and mature. But somehow, even if you think you have it cleared up, very often you don't. They even like to use the fact that you brought it up to further fuel fires... sheesh, I thought we were supposed to move past this kind of communication after junior and high school... but even the most elite among us can't handle it, heck they may even be the worst at it.. Or is it just doctors and educators? The most schooled among us. hmmm...That actually makes some sense since elementary and secondary schools seems to be where these problems would mostly lie and are rather developmentally appropriate, and most teachers go straight from high school into college, coming from highly flawed systems which they were successful in. Thus, they are very likely to repeat the same patterns. While doctors also usually go straight from high school to college and then stay in these education systems for many years being educated by educators who have never actually survived outside of these systems...
hmmm...
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