Sharing stories and Hillary the nurse

This is the first photo of the day that I ever took, a picture of the sink, which I described as me feeling like a "jumble" on April 22, 2022. These are literally placeholder posts so I can edit them on my phone at the retreat when I get content.

October 24, 2023:

Here's the actual content from 10/24/23, but I enjoy looking back at my very first photo of the day too. I'll write a bit about today as well. First things first, I took my meds at 8:30am with a scoop of their egg bake and some sausage patties. After breakfast, we did a wonderful activity that has definitely been the highlight of my time here so far. We sat in a huge circle and went around sharing all our stories. It took well over an hour, so lunch was late. I started by taking notes on what each person said, but frankly it was too much writing, so part way through I shifted to only marking the comments I thought were important.

I do have notes on well over half the people who are here though, which will be a nice resource to have. When I told my story, I said I'd been afraid that my TBI would be worse than everyone else's since some of their pages just called it a concussion, and I hadn't understood that mild injuries can build on each other and become severe. I also talked about the fact that at the time of my injury, I had been trying to escape from my other serious medical issue, the cancer, by working excessively, and of course that strategy doesn't work for a brain injury. I also know there was one girl named Leslie who said that she had wanted to get into a better place before coming here. I hadn't had that thought myself, but it's kind of exactly what I did, on accident.

The interesting thing was that there was one other girl who also had cancer, though she got her brain injury from the cancer, which I didn't. Also, some people talked about the TBI giving them a greater understanding of people and getting them more in touch with their emotional side. Not sure yet if that's true for me too.

Well, today I also was able to give a run down on my note taking strategies to some people. I also learned that the other person who said they knew some Spanish was my roommate Monica. Speaking of Spanish, I brought up the tattoo question to a lot of people. Someone suggested getting "love your brain" tattooed in Spanish. I'll ask details about how that's even translated when I'm home, though I'm not saying I'm randomly gonna go for it. Since there was a bonfire at night, I didn't try to do my meds with dinner today. Instead, I waited almost two hours after dinner and had them with two marshmallows and half a bar of chocolate at 8:38pm, while I was at the fire. I feel like loosening up a bit like that makes life a lot better. Then, late at night I had a wonderful conversation with this mother named Jenaya about how it's hard as a parent to let go of controlling your child when they've been in a coma. She also said she thought I was recovering extremely well for being only two years out. 

I should also add that I'm writing this the next day, but I'd like to include this thought that I had yesterday. It's that in a way, the "positive" of the TBI for me is that it's made me face my cancer trauma instead of hiding it under working 90 hours a week.

Grateful: I was grateful to have my meds with me today, especially given not taking them with dinner. Also grateful to be able to talk to people who understand, and hear their stories too.