Turns Out My Sister Really Is a Superhuman

In the 2+ years since her brain surgery, she has apparently developed heightened senses of smell and hearing. I'm not joking. She can hear the train approaching before anyone else. She smells the coffee blocks away from the coffeeshop. She sings along with music the neighbor is playing, which is barely perceptible to the normal ear. And my other sister, M, has warned me never to fart in AL's presence, because she will smell it, and she will call you out.

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that AL's brain is compensating for her loss of peripheral vision and slower language processing abilities in part by giving her superhero smell and hearing capabilities. Not exactly on par with flying or reading minds. But shoot, I'm impressed.

Travelers

My family is on their way to Chicago as I type this. Two parents, two sisters, one brother and a brother's girlfriend packed into a minivan, barreling west along highway 90, making a beeline for the cold, drizzly city I now call home. Six reasons to live this life. (Amen.) How's that for a strange notion?

I am very excited to see them. It is bound to do me good. And, as far as holidays go, Thanksgiving seems to be almost custom-made for my family. A weekend of food, drink, relaxation, card games, televised sporting events and neighborhood exploration? With no expectations of gift-giving, decorations or dressing up? Yeah (enthusiastically), we can do that!

Oh, and did I mention that I have rented them an apartment? A nice three-bedroom about half a mile from my place is just the thing to ensure a concordant celebration. No packing all eight of us into my tiny apartment. And if that's not something to be thankful for, then I don't know what is. Now if we can just find a turkey... Trader Joe's has run out. I know where I can find a rooster, but something tells me that would be wrong.

This is not the first time K and I have hosted my family for Thanksgiving, but it will be the first time we have hosted them in Chicago. So I'll let you know how it goes, and will also try to post soon about some of the things I've been up to throughout my two-week silence.

Baby Talk

I am just over a month into my community college course in 'Human Growth and Development' (see here and here) and it has been a splendid experience so far. I lucked out with a very capable instructor who aptly breaks up our three hour and forty-five minute evening class periods into smaller, easier to swallow sections of lectures, small group discussions and videos. (Even so, I don't know what I would do without the Dunkin Donuts across the street.)

I have been finding the subject matter fascinating. Here's a tiny sampling:

- A newly fertilized egg survives without any nourishment from the mother for up to two weeks as it makes its way through the fallopian tube to the uterus and implants itself.
- Following childbirth, the uterus continues to contract for several weeks. (This is how it 'shrinks.') A few women report more pain from these contractions than from those accompanying childbirth. (!) Breastfeeding helps stimulate the secretion of oxytocin, which encourages the uterus to contract back to (approximately) its pre-pregnancy size.
- Infants literally grow overnight. Researchers have measured growth of up to a full inch in less than 24 hours in infants up to 21 months.
- Hopi infants spend the first year of their lives strapped to a board yet begin to walk at about the same time as children in other societies.
- Researchers who re-wired the brains of baby ferrets so that visual input was sent to the auditory cortex instead of the visual cortex found that the ferrets actually learned to see pretty well.

In last night's class, we started getting into the ways in which infants begin to develop language skills, and how their brains lay the groundwork for the tremendous burst of language development that will take place over the next several years. I perked right up, because one of my main reasons for taking the class is to explore my interest in speech therapy.

As part of my efforts to figure out whether I would enjoy studying speech therapy, this foundational course is all well and good. Actually doing speech therapy, however, is a pretty different animal. For that reason, I knew I would have to seek out opportunities to learn more about what it is really like to work in the field and whether the practicalities of being a speech therapist would be a fit for me.

With that in mind, I am going to spend all day tomorrow with a real live speech pathologist. Although A is not working in an area that I am particularly interested in - she works exclusively with 0 to 3 year-olds - I think it will be beneficial to pick her brain about the different types of work that are out there, her likes/dislikes, etc. Plus she is really cool.

So tomorrow I will shadow A as she visits her clients. I will have to get up a whole hour earlier than usual, but I'm thinking the adorability factor will make up for it. My co-workers are pretty cute, but who can compete with a bunch of toddlers? Speaking of adorable, here's a photo of the Amazing J, who I will have a chance to hang out with this weekend.

Look at that arm! It's like someone put a really tight rubber band around her wrist. So cute!

Last time I saw Amazing J, I wasn't sure what the correct term was for our relationship (she is my cousin's daughter). According to the Internet, she is my 'first cousin once removed,' but that sounds cumbersome and formal so I'm just going to stick to calling her Amazing J. 252 days old and counting... If any of the children tomorrow are as cute as she is, I may just have to steal one to bring home to live with me.

Lemondrops and Gumdrops

As a child, my sister M was a huge Barney fan. Huge. Yes, I'm talking about the big purple dinosaur. And until you have lived with a huge Barney fan, you cannot know the toll it takes on the entire household.

At first, it was actually kind of cute. M would carry around her stuffed Barney, which was almost half her size, and sing the 'I Love You' song. Don't worry, I'll spare you the lyrics. She would patiently look forward to PBS' daily airing of Barney, filling the rest of her time with more wholesome (and by that I mean less annoying) things like coloring and playing on the swingset.

Then one day, someone bought her a Barney video. And things quickly spiralled out of control. In addition to the half-hour tv show, we were now subjected to a daily screening of the half-hour video. My brother and I - we would have been about eight and thirteen at the time - were constantly shocked and dismayed at how M would always want to see her video at the exact moment when it would be least convenient for us.

Say, for example, that I had come home from school and eagerly finished my homework in order to watch the new Punky Brewster with a clear conscience. Well, it was pretty much guaranteed that M would step up to the plate and request Barney. Ah yes, the same video with the same dinosaur, the same peppy kids and the same catchy songs. Again. I would plead with my dad, but he was always a sucker for an adorable toddler. "She hasn't watched it yet today," he would explain. "You're the oldest, don't you think you could just be nice and let her watch it?"

I usually did. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything, but I still to this day can bust out a handful of songs from that video. One of M's favorites - and also one of the most irritating - was called 'Lemondrops and Gumdrops.' Fear not, I will again spare you Barney's lyrical genius.

Fast forward to the present. M is a newly minted college freshman and I vowed last week to send her a care package - the first care package I have ever sent. For a moment, I thought it would be clever and funny (and slightly mortifying for her - all the better, mwahaha!) to go with a Barney video theme for the package. I could include all the goodies mentioned in the Barney songs I know, starting with lemondrops and gumdrops of course, and maybe throw in a mini Barney.

Then I realized that this would take much too much planning, and I can be pretty lazy sometimes. Plus, I knew that Swedish Fish would remind her of home and I really wanted to include them but couldn't see a way to make them fit with the Barney theme.

So today I mailed a perfectly swell non-themed care package to M. Snacky contents: Swedish Fish, trail mix, a single microwave popcarn packet, and a big ol' package of Nerds.


Non-snacky contents: yellow nail polish and a new file, a couple of little Burt's Bees products (because M's hands get very dry), a journal, two funky erasers shaped like a lobster dinner and piece of strawberry cake, bacon-flavored toothpicks (what?), mints, gum, and monkey head covers for keys to make them funnier and also easier to tell apart.


I also threw in a card and a random picture I found the other day. It is of M and our other sister AL, about eight years ago, and they have stuffed their shirts with croquet balls. My, how quickly they grow up - and sprout real breasts of their own!

Anyway, I hope M likes the package and that it makes her feel important and loved. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you... Ooops, there they are. Sorry, I just cannot seem to banish those lyrics from my head.

Girl Meets World: A Care Package

I've been feeling sort of dazed and ungrounded these last few days. Zoned out. I hate it when that happens. It's like a non-feeling. I'm not sure how I stumbled into it, but I guess I allowed myself to get caught up in the details of an annoying project at work, my first paper for the class I'm taking, and the GRE test looming in my near future.

So yesterday I was in full glazed-eyes computer robot mode when I came across this picture. That's my sister M, doing her special wild-arm lunge version of the running man. Isn't it great? And yes, I share much of the same genetic material.

As I was contemplating how funny and awesome M is (and good at dancing!) it dawned on me that I have not spoken to her in the last several weeks, since before she moved into her freshman dorm four hours away from home. Come to think of it, I haven't spoken to any of my family members for at least a couple of weeks.

That speaks to the larger picture of why I have been wandering around dazed and confused lately. Caught up in the stress-inducing tasks ahead of me, I neglected my normal sanity-preserving activities like staying connected with my family and working out. The result is I feel like a zombie.

No more. I'm going to the gym right now. And then I'm going to do the running man. A little later this week, I am going to send M a care package. Hard to believe, but this will be the first real care package I've ever sent. M deserves it, and I think it will do us both some good. Suggestions for what to include, anyone?

Time Well Spent

For Learning to Love You More assignment #35, I asked my family to describe what I do with my time. Three of my favorite people ever rose to the challenge, and they did an excellent job - gold stars all around. I found it hilarious how each of them expressed worry that they would either not do it right ("Do I have to write this in third person?"), or that they did not have enough information to produce a very accurate description. It is strange how little we sometimes know about the mundane, day-in-day-out activities of our important ones. I think we tend to see them in terms of how they impact our own lives and as who they are to us as whole people, not necessarily defined by the details of what they typically choose to do with their free time or what do you actually do at work, anyway? Especially when you live, as I do, far away from your family, they really only know whatever you choose (consciously or unconsciously) to tell them.

This assignment certainly fit into the category of something I'd never done before, and it was fun to read the responses I got. It is admittedly a bit of a narcissistic exercise, but I would recommend it! Here are my responses, in the order I received them:

My Dad
Hi A,
This is what I think you do with your time. (I'm kind of embarrassed that I don't know better)

Your work days probably start at about 7am, with a shower, a cup of coffee, and a quick breakfast, like a bagel or a bowl of cereal. By about 8am, you're out the door and walking/riding the bus downtown, unless you got your bike replaced. You arrive at your office just before 9am, probably get yourself another cup of coffee, and settle in at your desk. You spend your day answering calls from clients, and researching whatever the current projects are. (I'm rather clueless here). You go out for lunch with a co-worker or two, and then it's back to more of the same at the office until 5pm. The bus takes you back to your neighborhood, and you go to the gym to work out for about an hour. It's about seven when you walk in the door and smell K's dinner. A pleasant little hug and kiss from your mate, and you sit down to eat. After dinner, you take care of the dishes, then sit down to check your e-mail, blog, whatever on the PC. I would think you check the day's news headlines also. Next, you settle down on the couch with the K and watch a movie, that is if there's no football on the television. On football nights you probably retire to the room farthest away from the TV room, and get some studying done. I really have not talked to you about the going back to school thing, so I don't know how and where you fit the classes and studies into your day. When K goes to bed early to go to work in the middle of the night, you probably do some homework while he sleeps. You would go to bed about midnight.

On weekends I suspect you guys stay in bed until 10 or 11, unless you have something special planned. Then you get up, have breakfast, and get your laundry started. In the afternoon I expect you would go for a walk or a bike ride. Possibly a little shopping, and then dinner out. You probably walk to a cozy place close to home, so you don't have to worry about having a drink or two. I'm sure you do some reading for pleasure, and you're pretty good about staying in touch with your siblings. I can't come up with much more A, I better call you so you can tell me more about your life. Love you lots!

My Brother
Disclaimer : We don't talk enough, I don't know much about your job, but your awesome and I love you so I'm doing the "assignment" anyways.

In general A is a very happy person; trying to enjoy the simple things in life she often finds herself smiling during her daily routine. Waking up next to a man she loves and working a job she finds at least somewhat rewarding help her stay positive. She spends time commuting to and from work everyday which she does not particularly like, but understands this is simply the price she must pay in order to live in a big city (which she must enjoy... DC-NYC-Chicago). After work A likes to exercise, which she does in a number of ways; riding her bike (until it was stolen), going to the gym, and playing kickball are some of her favorites. I would guess she wants to exercise 5 times a week, but only manages an average of 3. A also spends a large portion of her time at home. Some of her favorite and most time consuming activities include reading and watching movies. Since she subscribes to netflix she probably watches 2-3 movies a week and spends more time on that than reading. A also enjoys home cooked dinners, usually prepared by her boyfriend K, on average 5 times a week. On the off nights they either order in (some sort of asian cuisine or pizza) or go out together for a dinner at a "sit-down" restuarant. Some of A's less time consuming interests include video games (wii), watching tv (daily show), shopping at the local stores (within walking distance), and browsing the internet. A also spends some time every week doing household chores such as buying groceries, taking out the trash, sweeping, and cleaning. Overall A tries to keep herself relatively busy, but always manages to make time for her boyfriend K, who in turn helps keep A the smiling, happy-go-lucky, energetic person she is today.

My Cousin M
(click the image to bring up a bigger, more legible version)

LTLYM #35: Ask your family to describe what you do

It's about time for another LTLYM assignment! Next up is #35: Ask your family to describe what you do. The instructions are:

Ask three family members to write down a description of what it is they think you do with your time. Ask them to try to think about how you live your life and what are your main activites and interests. They could give a particular example of something you are doing, like "at the moment Susie is building a car, and it is taking up most of her evenings and weekends...," but they should not focus on examples of things you have done in the past. Also you are not asking them to say what they think of what you are doing, but only to describe it in as much detail as they know. Don't let the members of your family compare notes (until the the assignment is complete), and similarly try not to put words into their mouth or tell them what they should write. This can be of any length.
Assignment given by Emma Hedditch

I think this assignment could be very interesting. How will my family members respond to the request? Will they be enthusiastic or will it seem like a chore? How will what they write compare to how I see myself?

Developments

For several months now, I have been talking a little and thinking a lot about going back to school. From where I sit, almost five years removed from full-time studenthood, I can enthusiastically say that I love school. And I am absolutely not too cool. When it comes to deciding where and how to go back, the first major hurdle is figuring out what I want to study. I'm sure that I am not alone in feeling that having a shallow depth of knowledge across a wide range of interests makes it difficult to set a course. But at least I have an idea:

In the last year and a half or so (and not totally unrelated to this experience), I've started to read up on and become more interested in how people learn language, the ways in which those processes might be different for different people, and how we can teach the brain to recover lost language skills and knowledge after a traumatic injury. So it sounds like maybe I should learn about speech pathology. The only problem is that I don't have any training in teaching, therapy or speech. So how to know if they are really for me? I need an affordable introductory course to test the waters.

I've looked into a couple of options, and I think the best one for me is to sign up for a class at Truman College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. They offer fall courses in 'Language Development ' and 'Human Growth and Development' at the very attractive price of $79 per credit hour for Chicago residents. Good sign: I emailed one of the instructors in their Social Sciences Department to ask for guidance, and she responded within an hour with useful advice.

I've done my info-gathering and paid a visit to Truman. Now it's time to take the plunge. My mission for this week is to sign up for a fall class. I get a few butterflies in my stomach when I think about the fact that the first day of term is in just two and a half weeks, but then I remember that this is school we're talking about. And I love school.

Happy 175th Day, J

I had a new mission this week: to find my list from sixth grade of things I hoped to accomplish in my lifetime. And I failed. Having arrived in Utica late Thursday evening, K and I spent Friday helping with preparations for my sister's graduation party and all day Saturday at the party itself. That left me with a couple of hours on Sunday morning to potter around my parents' basement storage room looking for my list.

I tried, but the only thing I achieved was the (inevitable) frustration of unpacking various boxes only to find that I was unable to fit the contents back into the very same receptacles. I emerged from the basement a list-less and sweaty mess, took a shower and resumed travel to Chicago, feeling thwarted the whole way home.

I know it's there somewhere, and next time I visit my parents, I shall try again. I wonder if one of the goals on the list was to be able to find the list.

Other than the list fiasco, the weekend was a grand success. I got to hang out with baby J, the newest member of my extended family. She is so cute and fun and inspiring that I just have to post a picture of her:


All right, two pictures:


I can't help it - she's 175 days old today, and I'm just such a proud great-second-cousin-aunt! What the heck am I to my first cousin's baby anyway?

And while I'm at it, here's one of me with my sisters. That's youngest sis AL on the left, me in the middle and the graduate M on the right. I should mention that I also have a brother of whom I'm extremely proud, but for some reason he was not present for this photo shoot.


When I eventually find my list, I think I can check off having a blast with my family and taking super cute pictures to prove it.

Apollo, Apollo

On the too-rare occasion that I find myself watching an episode of a little show called 30 Rock, I usually laugh so hard I puke. Ok, not really, but I do miss a lot of hilarious jokes because I'm still laughing at previous ones.

Not long ago, I caught an episode in which Jack is turning 50 years old and he's just come across a list that he wrote in fifth grade of goals he hoped to accomplish by his fiftieth birthday. They include "go to Disneyland, ride in an airplane, kiss Peggy Fleming, live in a house with stairs, beat up a Russian," and that old stand-by, "hit mom with a car." Oh Jack, you are terrible.

If I am not mistaken, I too made a list - in sixth grade, I think it was - of things I wanted to accomplish in my lifetime. Wouldn't it be fun to find it and see if I've actually made any headway? I'm spending this weekend at my parents' house in Utica, so I will have the chance to try to dig up that list.

Jack has accomplished all but one of the childhood goals on his list by age 50. (He has not yet managed to befriend Batman.) But despite his many accomplishments, Jack realizes that he is not really that happy. Isn't it nice to know that the realization of happiness is a complex and ever-evolving personal process? So I will be sure not to take it too hard if I have not completed many of the items on my own list. Still, it would be fun to check off at least one or two...

For My Sister, the Superhuman

On October 4, 2007, my sister AL suffered a stroke due to a ruptured and bleeding cerebral AVM . Several months later, I sat down and wrote about the experience. My main intention was self-therapy through writing, but I also wanted to record some of the details that I thought (correctly) would fade from my memory over time.

Recently, AL and I had a conversation about how little she remembers from the weeks after the stroke (click here for a little more fore/background). I told her about my AVM journal and she was keen, so today I'm going to mail her a copy of it in its entirety. Please read on for a couple of excerpts.

In this first one, I had just learned from my dad that AL had both an active bleed and a large clot in her brain. When I first got off the phone with him, I was confused and on the verge of hyperventilating, but then my colleague, C (well, former colleague - I worked in NYC at the time) talked me down, and together we decided that I should leave work that very minute to begin the five-hour drive to my sister in Syracuse.

I was scheduled to go to China for work in three days. I took everything I would need for the trip with me (except, I realized later, my airplane ticket), because I was hopeful; a lot could change in three days. Maybe my sister would be fine in three days. C walked me to the bus terminal carrying more than her fair share and proclaiming herself my Sherpa. I was on the 2:50 bus and K left work early to meet me at the park & ride. We were on our way up to Syracuse. The ride was long and I hated it. It sort of reminded me of the time when, shortly after graduation from college, when I was working as a waitress and uninsured, I had a cyst on my head the size of a golf ball (and growing!) and K drove me from Washington, DC all the way up to Utica to see the only doctor who would remove the cyst for free - my mother. The pain had gotten to the point where I was rotating doses of Vicodin with three Advils, taking one of the other every two to three hours and I was still in a world of hurt. The present drive to Syracuse was throbbing painfully in a completely different way.

We finally arrived after about five hours in the car and were instructed by my dad to go to the fourth floor Pediatric ICU. She was stable. We walked into the PICU, and hers was the bed straight ahead and just to the left. I went to her and she looked just as she had last time I saw her. I gave her a hug and that's when she said "I love you" and I felt an immense rush of relief. She was fine! But then I noticed she wasn't really talking at all, or hardly at all. Everyone was talking to each other around her, but her participation consisted only of non-verbal communication: facial expressions, gestures, hand squeezes. A resident came over to give her a little test. He pointed to his watch and asked her if she knew what it was. She shrugged and laughed at herself and shrugged. Next, he asked her to name the object he had in his hand - a pen. She said "sand," in a rising tone, like it was a question and you could see in her eyes that she knew she was totally wrong. It was just this look of 'What am I saying?!' The resident asked her if she knew what the object was for / what people do with it, and she answered by making a writing motion with her right hand.

There were more questions, but I didn't hear them - I felt like I was going to lose it. This was bad. First, I turned around and took a few steps away from the bed because I didn't want AL to see me. Then I involuntarily sunk down to my knees. K was on me like a flash, squatting in front of me - "are you ok?" - and I was trying not to cry because I didn't want others to hear me. The situation was bad enough for AL, my parents, my brother and my other sister. Maybe because I wasn't allowing myself to cry, I was having trouble breathing. A split-second later, over K's shoulder, I saw a nurse coming towards me with a needle and asking if I was all right. I stood up, grabbed K's arm, and walked - almost ran - out of the PICU. Safely in the hallway, I let out my tears and my shock and my disbelief. That initial moment of realization - sometimes it takes seeing with your own eyes to grasp the gravity of a situation - passed, and soon I was able to pull myself together. The next two weeks were a complete roller coaster for my entire family - we dared to hope; we let the doctors' bleak assessments get to us; we knew she would be ok; we were faced with the fact that she would need long, hard, dangerous brain surgery; we saw the other brave kids in the PICU fighting their own battles with death or near-death; we watched AL laugh hysterically one day and fall into depression the next; we prayed (very rare, at least for me); we were insomniacs; we wondered when they would ever operate on her...

And here's an excerpt about AL's surgery, which finally took place on October 18. The two weeks leading up to it were hectic in the way that hospital life is. The doctors kept pushing the surgery back because they wanted all the blood to have a chance to settle down, dissolve, whatever.

When they wheeled her into surgery, my mom went with her in a crazy blue suit - half astronaut, half Pillsbury doughboy. AL went to sleep and mom joined all of us in the waiting room for what we expected to be a five or six-hour wait. We took turns going down to the cafeteria, getting coffee, walking around. Books and TV (mostly nothing on, but I do remember watching Ellen) to pass the time. There was a Mickey Mouse phone in the waiting room, and we were told we would get a call when the surgery was over or almost over. So, at the six-hour mark, every time the phone would ring, we would be all excited. But it was for other parents, other families... and the hours dragged on. About ten hours after she had been put under, we finally got our call. AL was being stitched up - the head neurosurgeon came in and told us that it had gone well, though longer than expected. There were literally thousands of vessels attached to the AVM, which they had needed to remove. So, for each of those tiny vessels, they had to cut, tie off, burn - very time consuming. We were all glad to know it was over and she was safe. They wheeled her through the hall and back up to the PICU. As we caught a glimpse of her, we could see that her eyes were both under the bandage that was holding her head together. She looked like hell, but she was alive.

The next day I got to really appreciate the shape she was in. She looked (and, I'm sure, felt) like she had gone a few rounds with a heavyweight and not been allowed to fight back and then been hit by a bus. The incision went from the center of the top of her forehead to the back of her head and then curved around and up behind her left ear. The skin and muscle had been pulled back and a piece of skull literally sawed out before the surgeons could even start working on her brain. Her left eye was huge, purple and swollen shut; her right eye was a slit. They had to increase her self-dosed morphine, which was the only medication they had found to effectively control her pre-surgery pain, to one full gram per push of the button. She was allowed one push every seven minutes. On top of all the pain, she was still having immense trouble communicating, and the morphine made her foggy and out-of-it. She was extremely irritable. She would want something described as "that" and would get frustrated when we didn't know what she meant. It was hard to bear and yet, the absurdity of the situation got the better of me at one point, and I just had to laugh. I brushed past the curtain surrounding her bed and laughed softly but hysterically next to the nurses' station. One of the nurses came up behind me - she must have assumed I was crying, which was fair enough, because there was a fair bit of that going on - and she asked if I was ok. I turned, smiled and said, "My sister is being such a bitch!" The nurse giggled and we agreed that the bitchiness was a good sign. Later, my sister would share that she really thought she wanted to die then. To just let go would have been such a welcome release. But she was feisty, and she fought on.

Don't worry, reader - it ends happily! And it makes me so proud to go back and think about all that AL's been through and how we handled it together as a family. She is an amazing girl and I am in awe of her. AL was fourteen years old at the time of her stroke. The only phrase she was able to articulate on that day - "I love you" - is indicative of her personality. She has faced mortality and depression in ways someone her age shouldn't have to. And almost the whole time, she's been able to laugh at herself.

Blood Draw Adventures and AVM Journal

Doctor's appointment update: I survived! After procrastinating for literally years (read about it here and here), I found a doctor and had myself checked out. My visit was uneventful until I went to the lab to have my blood drawn. The tech asked me if I've ever fainted during a blood draw and I said no, I haven't had this done in a loooong time, but it shouldn't be a problem.

Her first try was painful. I wasn't looking at the site, but it felt like she was digging a ditch with that needle. I felt a sudden rush of heat and said, "Woah, I don't feel so good." Apparently I was having what is referred to in medical jargon as a vasovagal response - what a terrible feeling! I was given an ice pack and told to lay my head down. Several minutes later, the tech asked if I wanted to go ahead with the blood draw. "Absolutely," I replied. "I don't want to have to fast again!" So we went to find an exam room where I could lie down. She tried again, in my other arm this time, and everything went smoothly.

At the end of the visit, I felt fantastic. As I skipped along to my office, I texted my little sister AL: "Just had my blood drawn and almost fainted. Guess I'm not as tough as you." AL suffered a stroke in October of 2007 due to a cerebral arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - this picture at right gives an idea of what an AVM might look like. In the months that followed, she had to undergo invasive brain surgery and countless medical tests and procedures. After all that, I figured that a blood draw would be a piece of cake for her.

AL texted me back: "Oh but you are! I would probably faint too." Hmmm. Later that day, she called me. She said that she doesn't really remember having her blood drawn in the hospital, even though it was done several times. The combination of intense pain, heavy and sustained medication, and brain bleeding have left her with huge gaps in her memory of the time she spent in the hospital.

AL said that it's weird to have these long stretches of time that she doesn't remember. Or she'll remember one random thing that happened, but not know exactly when it happened or what came before and after. This made me think of the time I sat down and wrote a journal about her (our) ordeal. I thought she might like to see it. Maybe it would help fill in one or two of the gaps. AL seemed excited about this. Thus, my assignment for the week became digging up the journal and sending her a copy. I'm looking forward to a re-read (writing the journal was so therapeutic at the time), and hope my sister finds something in there worth knowing, too.