I cannot call him Doctor so when he enters the room I say, "Hi Brett." He is the same Brett I remember from nearly forty years ago. At least the few memories of him I can conjure. He has a pleasant way about him. He angles the screen towards me and begins flipping through the images like slides. As he turns towards me, the flipping stops and he says that I was born with everything needed in the brain department or something like that. I imagined him saying the exact same thing to many patient o quell their anxiety. He explained what I was looking at from which angle and more or less told me what I had been expecting to hear. The white area or lack of it indicated the brain had been hurt. We looked at the area that appeared smaller than its counter part on the brain's opposite side and he said something about the image being reversed. In essence the left side of my brain is less than the right which makes sense. The left side of my brain controls the right side of my body which is definitely compromised and doesn't work quite right.
It has not worked right since my accident in 1991 but I was young then, just 30 years old, so I regained enough function to get me here. Over the past few years I have noticed a decline and since about a year ago I started dealing with extreme fatigue. That's why I was at my neurologist's to begin with.
"We ARE 57 years old, Lexie," Brett informed me when he suggested it was simply the aging process. I read somewhere that a traumatic brain injury automatically takes 10 years off your life span. When I think in terms of being 67, it makes more sense that I am tired, really tired. But my sister Wally explains it best when she says everything physical takes me twice the amount of work.
In the end, I am glad I had the scan because I saw the actual damage. It was something I had never seen. For some reason, it makes me feel better. I have spent years explaining why I am the way I am but now I have seen the proof that backs up my claims.
Nurse Rachel never did hear Brett's words because I did something wrong with my phone. It may be smarter than me.
It has not worked right since my accident in 1991 but I was young then, just 30 years old, so I regained enough function to get me here. Over the past few years I have noticed a decline and since about a year ago I started dealing with extreme fatigue. That's why I was at my neurologist's to begin with.
"We ARE 57 years old, Lexie," Brett informed me when he suggested it was simply the aging process. I read somewhere that a traumatic brain injury automatically takes 10 years off your life span. When I think in terms of being 67, it makes more sense that I am tired, really tired. But my sister Wally explains it best when she says everything physical takes me twice the amount of work.
In the end, I am glad I had the scan because I saw the actual damage. It was something I had never seen. For some reason, it makes me feel better. I have spent years explaining why I am the way I am but now I have seen the proof that backs up my claims.
Nurse Rachel never did hear Brett's words because I did something wrong with my phone. It may be smarter than me.
No comments:
Post a Comment