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 Each day feels new, and my memory of the one before is faint. I’m learning to adapt. |
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In September 2019, a seizure revealed a lime-sized meningioma pressed against my hippocampus—the part of the brain that governs memory and language. The doctors said it was benign, but benign didn’t mean harmless. Surgery removed the tumor, and three days later I opened my eyes to a new reality. I could walk, I could talk, but when I looked at my wife, her name was gone. I called her Precious—the only word I could find. A failure of memory, yet perhaps the truest name of all. Recovery has been less cure than re-calibration. Memory gaps are frequent. Conversations vanish. I had to relearn how to write, letter by halting letter. My days are scaffold by alarms, notes, and calendars. When people ask how I am, I don’t list symptoms or struggles. I simply say, “Seven Degrees Left of Center.” It’s not an answer—it’s who I’ve become. |
| Level 4 headache. Not hospital bad. Just enough to make everything feel slightly off-center. Thoughts took the long way around. Light felt louder than it should. My brain started up, but it sputtered like an old pickup on a cold morning. It was working, just not willingly. And the day didn’t slow down just because I did. I had a funeral to attend. Funerals are heavy on good brain days. Yesterday I showed up with maybe seventy percent of myself and hoped that would be enough. Turns out, it was. Presence doesn’t require perfection. It just requires… presence. After lunch, I let myself power down. No heroics. No “push through and power on.” Just water, quiet, dim light, and letting my brain cool off. Self-care at this stage of life looks less like bubble baths and more like respecting the warning lights on the dashboard. We write a lot about good brain days. The sharp ones. The clear ones. The mornings when ideas come easily, and coffee tastes like momentum. Yesterday wasn’t that. It was a steady-the-ship kind of day. The older I get — and the further I get from the tumor — the more I understand that not every day is meant to be productive or profound. Some days are maintenance days. Yesterday, I did what needed to be done. Then I rested. That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom I didn’t have before. |
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