Morning look, Insta post of Spanish group, me in Eisenberg at Mayo

December 4, 2023

Alright I’m in a Mayo Clinic hospital bed at the moment. I honestly MAYBE am in the same building as I was when I did my senior year of college, since I’m on a chemo floor. Today, I had meds at 7:53 am with another Load’d ice cream bar. Then, Papa drove me to Mayo Clinic while I began to organize my computer, and then also did an entire therapy session in the car with Jessica while he was there. I had an early meeting with Jessica today, and we talked for pretty much the entire ride. We decided that I’m independent in a a lot of ways, which I know my mom has ben telling me for a while. I also shared my thought that in a way, disability could potentially be my key to not having to move in with a parent for health insurance. I think I also said that in a way, the brain injury has led to some enlightenment for me, and also 15 notebooks worth of notes. The notes really did come out of the brain injury since they were a coping mechanism for awful memory, but now they’ve become much more than that. One of the more important things I decided while talking to Jessica is that “writing things down helps me to process them.” I literally put that thought in bold on my computer when I was taking notes.

Jessica also suggested possibly getting little mini vertical post-it notes to mark certain pages in my notebooks so I can access information more easily. I definitely wanna do that, but just can’t figure out what those post-it notes are called so I can Google them. The other cool thing I did today was I made an Instagram post with a few pictures from the Spanish learners/natives meetup I went to the other day. That’s the photo in the middle, which is one of three pics I included in my post. And then the picture on the right is a Snapchat I posted where I talked about “finally looking like I belong here” (in the hospital), because in the past, like when I’ve been going through chemo, I’ve looked 100% healthy upon first glance. Now, my face is notably smashed, so I look a lot more like “deserve” to be in the hospital for some reason. I know that post-fall when some people have asked me if I was in a car accident, I say “yes, but not recently/not this injury.” 

Let’s get back to today! Already a bit past midnight. Today, I was admitted and taken for my first MRI, which was a brain one. I had a doctor named Dr. Shah, and today it was decided that I’m not gonna be able to have the biopsy today, but it’s already scheduled for tomorrow. The other relevant item is that I had some wonderful talks with some nurses. Currently, I have one named Addie, who literally just came in to check in on me ahorita. I said it was annoying to be missing things I had scheduled while here, and that my next important activity is gonna be Thursday night. She said that she’d try to make sure some people knew that I’d like to get out before that, but that everything depends on what the scans show and how it all goes. Earlier in the day, I had told her about how I feel like I’m taking some control back from my illness by doing a really good job of managing my meds. I also had mentioned to her that in a way, having the brain injury has actually helped me to be able to deal with my cancer, which I’d been not facing at all because of constantly working, at three jobs.

I also managed to give Addie one of my photography business cards, and she chose the photo of the archers from Robin Hood at Theatre in the Round. I said I ordered a bunch more now too, mostly new photos. Oh, and the other cool thing I did today was write my first ever Caring Bridge post, which usually mom has been doing for me, given that for a lot of them I was less than conscious.