You really don’t have to read this. I’m just venting about something that’s frustrating me but doesn’t really have any bearing on anyone else’s life.
When I went in for brain surgery about a year and a half ago, I was informed that there would be repercussions to having my head operated on.
The tumor chose to take up residence deep in the left temporal lobe of my brain. As a result, that was the section that had a chunk surgically excised. The neurosurgeon removed as much of the tumor as he felt was possible without risking severe brain damage, but unfortunately that meant that there were sections of the tumor that couldn’t be taken out.
Because cancer cells were still in my head, I went through radiation therapy: the blasting a section of my brain with ionizing radiation with the intent to kill any cancerous cells by killing all of the cells in an area. The target was—you guessed it—a section of the left temporal lobe of my brain. So a part of the thing in my head that I think with was sliced out, and then shot with radiation.
One of the main functions of the left temporal lobe is language, both verbal and written. What does this have to do with anything? Well, in part it’s my reason for being so sparse with my blogging. Let me explain. After my tumor was removed and while I was going through radiation and chemo, my good friend Tyler took it upon himself to stop by and visit with me a few times a week. (As an aside, I sincerely appreciate his willingness to do that despite his busy schedule. It made a very rough time of my life much more bearable.)
Tyler’s language abilities are, in brief, awesome (check out his blog if you don’t believe me), and he has a library to match. He brought over a few books to give me something to do whilst an invalid. I was excited to read them. I grabbed one, went and got comfortable, and opened it up to read. I wasn’t able to. I could see the letters just fine, but when I “read” (for lack of a better term) a sentence, I could not have told you what it conveyed if my life had depended on it. I laid there reading one sentence over and over trying to comprehend what it conveyed, but to no avail. It didn’t work the way it used to.
This was incredibly frustrating, and to be honest it terrified me. Reading and writing were what I would have considered to be strengths of mine. Having lost the ability to interpret written language was scary. Thankfully, in the time since then I’ve regained some semblance of my old ability to read and write. As you see by reading this, I’m using written language. It’s pretty amazing what the human body is capable of. But to be honest, it’s a lot more difficult now than it used to be. Remembering things I’ve heard or read is harder. Trying to learn names is frustrating. Sometimes I struggle to remember how to spell words, when it used to be a breeze.
I’ve been doing a ton of reading for school. It’s not like it used to be, but I’m at least functional. I think that my daily exposure to reading—news, email, etc.—has helped a lot. Writing—organizing thoughts and getting them out—is still proving to be a major challenge though. I took a written test last week and it didn’t go very well. I’m trying to write a paper for class and I’m really struggling. Trying to blog hasn’t been going so well. Just writing this post has taken way longer than it should, and it’s got plenty of issues. I just want to be able to write again. I need to work on this.
I guess it all boils down to that.
