Waking up

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten. Breathe. Lifting my right index finger..lifting the left. Wiggle my toes. I CAN WIGGLE MY TOES! ON BOTH FEET! All TEN!  The pain strikes again... starting over.. One-two-three...counting to ten, breathe, wiggle, repeat.  I could hear a distant voice "vanessa...vanessa...How are you feeling? Do you need more pain relief?" '"...yes..." Dozed on and off. The pain was so severe but the morphine was injected  directly into the drip, went straight into the bloodstream. The relief wasn't far away but agony like this was hard to take even for just a few short moments. The surgery took 4.5 hours, I woke up after 6. I was in intensive care for the The week that followed. I had stitches all over my head so I couldn't move any facial muscles without excruciating pain. I've looked it up.. there are 53 different facial muscles and many of those are engaged when you smile and I had plenty of reasons to smile... The fact that I could move my left side was incredible... over exceeded the doctor's and my family's expectations.  Every single day I take a moment to thank my  body... one by one I thank my limbs, organs, my senses.. out loud I say "Thank you heart,lungs,liver, kidneys.. " I keep going thanking my "tendons, muscles, all my millions of cells that together constructmymy body. My body, My silent companion that has been serving me so well. I love, love, love my body and what it is capable of doing: dance, run, jump, bend and stretch! Being intensive care means that every little detail of you is monitored, analysed, checked, reported. I was soon swept into the routines and the nurse rounds. I was very immobilised at first, turning in bed on my own was not an option and I was even being spoonfed my dinner. I was too tired to even worry about the lost independency. Receiving help is more important than dignity and personal integrity. I got over that part fast...My body was no longer my own as I was used to. The nurse staff were uncredible though, so porofessional, made the situation as good as it possibly could. I did have some odd things going on after surgery.. I kept repeating the same questions, obsessing over certain things and not remembering the answers to the questions I've just asked. The orientation around the room thing that the surgeon had me warned sbout was now making sense, It was hard to grasp what was in front and behind me... such as grabbing something and bringing it towards me would instead being me pushing it further away from me. The concept of getting dressed was also a bit of a task..tops and pants just have so many holes and where does all the body parts go? It would take me a few attempts to get dressed properly. I also had a few scary  nights of nightmares and night terrors and out of body experiences ..and I'm not sure if it was the heavy medication but at times I felt so red-light-low on energy.. I could hear my own heartbeat and wasn't sure if it was enough. Do I have enough beats to last me the day? I did have enough heart beats and eventually I was even allowed going home to my dad's for weekend breaks and finally.. I was discharged as an out patient. It felt good to be home, slowly the orientation issue and the memory-loss started to dissapear. It's unbelievable that I've gone through such a complex braintrauma with close to none impacts. The one problem I got is my vision, there were many blind spots but there at my last eye test showed massive improvements. I have some double-vision but I ave glasses that corrects that, A very small price to pay... After all..I can wiggle my toes!  It was fantastic coming home,, but now there was the long wait,, "The surgwey was very successfull, we removed everything that we could see." The tumour behaved well and nothing malignant showed up on the initial biopsy test, it has been sent for further microscopig testing. These tests are done in several stages that takes time. We expect a result in the next few weeks."