Friday, July 27, 2018

July 27: My brain

It started with the writing. Nah, it probably started with the boring stickiness in conversation. I'm an extrovert and I love people and I can start talking and I just don't stop. Or at least I used to be that way--I have taught myself to catch social cues and I'm better at conversation now.

But then the writing. Notebook after notebook of diaries and silly stories and letters and doodles. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote every day. It was like I couldn't help myself. Some of it was good--my sixth grade Old Testament teacher loved the stories I turned in, the essays and confessions and fiction. I was especially interested in, and focused on, rewriting biblical stories from different points of view. At least for him.

I moved after 7th grade and wrote to Carol, Leslie, and Marita until the pens ran dry. Until I exhausted them. I moved during 9th grade and kept writing. I moved again after 10th grade and by that time maintained 14 overseas penpals as well as 4 former classmates who hung on for dear life. Sometimes my domestic mail would be 20 handwritten pages long.

I started typing to keep up with the thoughts. At night to go to sleep I would type out words with my fingers on my thigh or on a pillow. And I would think a lot about religion and wonder about deep things.

In college, this channeled into a Theology minor, lots of papers I had to edit down to size, and lots of late night conversations. I never thought anything was wrong with me.

I developed migraine auras without headache when I was 22. I was briefly medicated and then weaned myself off because the side effect of lethargy was too hard. I underwent EEGs and an MRI to see if maybe they were seizures. Inconclusive.

In my family, seizures run wild and crazy. All kinds--generalized, partial complex, clusters, absence. My dad's family has 8 siblings, 16 cousins, and 10 second cousins thus far--at about a 50% seizure rate (at least one, you have to have at least one to count). Some are medicated, some are told they have a low seizure threshold. I went in ready to battle the epileptologist when Maeve had her second seizure, but she was on my side. Maeve would let us know if she needed medication. She didn't--she hasn't had another in 8 years.

I never got answers. Later on, I was medicated for anxiety and some of the symptoms--hypergraphia especially--subsided. But there is something strange about my brain that medical science cannot pinpoint.

These two books helped.

7 comments:

  1. I think the brain is still largely uncharted territory, as least in terms of its functioning. I remember reading in one of Oliver Sacks's books about a patient of his who had a stroke. The man couldn't read after his stroke--everything looked like it was written in another language--but he could still write words (which was good, because he was a writer). Bizarre.

    I'm curious: do you still have all your journals? They would be an amazing chronicle of your life, if so.

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  2. Re your journals, I'm afraid I'm going to leave behind more writing than my kids are ever going to want to read. I didn't know Oliver Sacks wrote a book on migraine. I'll have to read it. I started getting migraine auras (sometimes with no headache, sometimes with a mild headache) after being bitten on the back of my neck by a tick. Any bright light will trigger it, and anything with a flicker—computer monitor, a ceiling fan, a drive through the woods with sunlight coming through the trees, and (the worst) fluorescent lighting. Thank you for mentioning this book.

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    1. Meant to add my oldest stepdaughter, my daughter Gillian, and my granddaughter had debilitating migraines, starting at a very early age. I assume they inherited them from my husband's side of the family, but who knows? Gillian and I would both get dizzy from seeing something that flickers. No nightclubs with strobe lights for us!

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  3. I have the occasional aura, no pain. It's strange, and it makes me wonder what could be ahead.

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  4. I had an MRI once with the report, "brain appears normal for age." It was reassuring at the time, though is less so now as I think of it.

    Also - aura migraines. Yes.
    And I was a prolific letter-writer when an AFS student.

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  5. I used to get what I think were migraines when I was a child. My mom called them nervous headaches and made me carry on with whatever I was supposed to be doing as if I brought them on myself. I remember crying and vomiting. They continued up until the birth of my oldest child. Now I only get ocular migraines with no pain at all.

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