Bloody tragedy, me with nurse and EMT at Spanish meet, horchata shot

December 3, 2023

Ok it’s like 1pm and I’m not even gonna try to put a single photo in since I’ll obviously have better ones later. It’s 10:45pm and I do now! I also suffered a major tragedy today, and in a way, as soon as it happened, I thought: “This is the closest I’ve come to receiving a brain injury since October 2021.” Basically today I woke up and purposely took my meds at 5am so I could have them early at night as well so I could do my two hours of no eating before the potluck I attended. Then, I went shopping. I bought my contribution for the potluck, and also while I was at Target I finished a ton of my grocery list. The list also included some makeup, milder hot sauce and some Trader Joe’s food with good fat counts. I was also able to get some more yogurt, even though I went to a location that didn’t have the type I usually buy. While I was shopping this morning, I also wrote down the note: “shopping alone makes me feel like an adult.” Then I brought all the stuff home. At home, I had the thought that I probably should eat lunch, and I called Jodi to see if she happened to have anything good lying around. On the call, she told me that I wasn’t able to come over because Bill currently has COVID, but she offered to make me a turkey sandwich and walk it towards me while walking her friend Tammy’s dog. I literally even told her that if she hadn’t done that, I probably would have totally skipped lunch because I don’t have a medication then I need to eat with it. I also had a wonderful talk with Jodi. I think I mentioned that I had been really depressed because of “not being normal,” without realizing that normal is NOT the goal. I think the cancer trauma taught me it was. What I’m kind of thinking now is that’s it’s possible I can be better than normal, and that’s one reason why I’m “not average.”

So I went home and ate Jodi’s turkey sandwich, and also briefly started this blog post and didn’t write basically anything. During that time, I also messaged a couple guys online and wrote down that I absolutely needed to translate some of those messages into Spanish and post them on Lang-8. It was stuff about “suffering from a really rare disease” before “the car hit me,” and now not being able to earn much money without losing my health insurance. Basically just basic introduction statements I’d love to be sure I can say in Spanish too.

Then I went to the Spanish meetup!!! It’s what I was really excited for all day. And the very first thing I did there was I stepped outside to run back to my car to get the charcuterie board I’d bought at Target for $15 so I could put it in the fridge, and I caught one of my feet over the doorstep and tumbled forward dramatically. My hands weren’t in front of me, so I caught myself using my face on the gravel ground. I grabbed a photo of myself pretty much as soon as I stood up after it happened and just so I’d be able to remember how bad it was. Then, a nurse named Virginia walked back to a bathroom with me and she spent like half an hour taping my face up and taking gravel out of my skin. She said that she almost chose to not bring her EMT kit, but decided to be safe with it. After we finished fixing me up, we also talked to this one other guy who was at the event and works as an EMT. He said that he felt like she did a good job, and told me that I should probably take the bandages off before I sleep, and not sleep in them. They’re still on at this instant. The rest of the night, I had simply amazing interactions. Near the end of the night, I ended up talking to a bunch of guys from Spain, including a guy named Daniel (who moved to Spain from Colombia), Ben (who also works for Medtronic), José (who said I speak Spanish better than his son does), Gonzalo (who I remember nothing specific about), and Angel (who is from Toledo and came with his girlfriend Ruth). The guys from Spain said that they all just met each other today, when I asked them if they knew each other before. There was also a guy from Venezuela who I showed my photos that I took in Perú of venezolanos having a baby, which was Nersis, who I still follow on Instagram.

Ok, as far as photos, I have the first photo I took of my face after my not-quite-another-traumatic-brain-injury, and then I have a photo I took with the two very helpful medical people, Angela and Trevor. Apparently Angela is a nurse, but she said she didn’t work in wound care or anything, and does ENT work with kids. The EMT backed up her work though. While she was patching me up, I also had a brilliant conversation with her, where I told her most of my story, including my recent important thoughts about not being normal, having tried to drown my depression in working 90 hours a week, but becoming ok with not normal now, and possibly seeing it as a good thing and not a failure like the cancer taught me to do. And then, at the very end of the night I sipped on a shot of horchata and also talked to a guy named Diego a bit, who added me to a wonderful new group on WhatsApp called “Amigos de hablar y caminar,” and I told him that being added to a group like that was literally what I’d been hoping for when I came to an event like this. Anyways, feel pretty good about this now, and don’t feel like I missed or forgot anything major, which is always a big success. Also got to hand out a few business cards, including one or two of my blog ones and pretty much all of the photo site ones I had with me. I LOVE having business cards to hand out, and I am deeply looking forward to receiving the new order of like 200 new photo cards that were mostly taken post-TBI, when I’m honestly happier than I was before. Anyways, I just tried to take most of the bandages off because the EMT Trevor told me to try to do that before I went to sleep, but the top one won't come off without ripping my scab, so I'll leave that one on.