Christmas Time Brings Random Thoughts

So yeh....done with school for the semester. For the past few weeks I have been awaiting this day, but now that it is here I still feel that I have stuff to do. I think that school put me into a rhythm that I can't get rid of, and now I am constantly anxious about getting non-existent work done. I think I just need to get out of Boone.

I have decided that I am going to drive to California this summer at some point. It is going to be fun. I don't know what I am going to do when I get there, but I do not really care. I have gotten advice about how to get there, but I am thinking about taking I-40 most of the way there even though it is supposed to get very boring. I will possibly deviate from the Google Maps route when I get near the Grand Canyon.

What would I do without Google Maps...use a real map?...do those even exist anymore...

I wonder how bad the map industry has been hurt by the free Google Maps service. This is why companies now charge for many online services that used to be free.

Has the economic downturn personally affected me? Eh, maybe, but probably more in the future when finding a job becomes a priority. I just feel depressed when I watch the news on TV.

This year has been the first year I have actually been wanting to watch TV on a regular basis. Heroes, Lost, The Office, 30 Rock, Fringe: all shows that I like. Fringe is actually kind of crappy. Part of me does not want not to watch these shows on TV though because of all the commercials for upcoming doomed-to-fail reality shows. I know I should not want to watch TV this much, but these shows allow me to have a few thrills or laughs that I will never get from my job as a graduate assistant.

My friend Geoff has refused to watch Lost. This is an understandable position due to it's ability to suck a person into it's pointless yet addictive story line. I am still going to attempt to get him to watch it. I don't have any friends left in Boone who watch this show, so I need someone else to get sucked in so I don't feel like such a goober.

What is the origin of the word goober?

Guess what band is going on a reunion tour...

News Flash!!!

Coming in 2009, Creed is holding a reunion tour!!!

If you are feeling down because all your money was lost in the stock market, or you have lost your job and are begging for food on the street, spend your stolen cash on a ticket to a concert guaranteed to push you six feet from the edge of suicide. Creed will help take your life to a higher level of depression, and ensure that you welcome all forms of alcohol with arms wide open. My sacrifice of all happiness in my life was an adequate trade for a chance to see the second best band in the world behind Nickelback. What if you miss your chance to see Creed next year? How will you feel?

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Ok, seriously. Creed is possibly the worst band to ever reach the top 10 charts 4 times. Eh...actually Nickelback is the worst, but Creed was the worst back in the day. At least Creed had well written songs, it was just that they performed so bad in front of live audiences that the audiences actually sued the band. The sad thing is that I listened to Creed back in their prime.... I listened to them so much I was able to cleverly inject 5 song titles into the previous paragraph. This is an ability of mine that I will most likely cry about later tonight when I lie in bed inside my own prison that is my underground apartment....oops...I did it again......and now I'm talking in Britney Spears song titles...

I apologize if you are a Creed fan. I know I was hard on them, but really, I am sorry you are a Creed fan...really sorry.

Too Much Brain Power For One Brain

Disclaimer: this is a grim post and that is not my brain. Mine looks way cooler.

So yeh, it has been a while blog.....

I have had a rough semester, and it is finally coming to a close. I have no exams, but have about 45 pages worth of papers due in the next week and half. I also am in charge of grading the exams and calculating the grades of over 430 freshmen Sociology students. But currently these issues are the least of my worries. I debated whether or not to blog about what is going on, but since I have been bombarded by people asking what is going on, I decided to go ahead and explain. So here is what has happened.

First off, I apologize in advance for the length. I just can't explain what has happened any easier. About a month or so ago I was at a high school football game in Boone with my father. We were just standing around watching the game in the freezing cold when my vision suddenly changed. I felt uneasy since I had had this same change in vision during by Junior year of high school, but had never gone to a doc to get it checked out. I had not had an incident since the few times it happened when I was in high school. It is hard to explain the change in vision. I begin to see things clearer, but my brain couldn't understand what it was seeing on the right side of my field of vision. After my vision changed, I started to smell something strange, and began to feel uneasy. I had my dad take me back to my apartment, where I began to feel sick. Changes in my vision and the uneasy feeling continued for the next couple days, and then subsided. This is when I decided to go to a doc.

After an optomologist found nothing wrong with my eyes, I got an MRI. I was called the next morning by a nurse at health services, who felt it necessary to tell me over the phone they had found something in my brain. I then spent the next 7 hours in a health services inpatient room with nothing but my cell phone. Having that much time to think about this, without knowing any info, was one of the worst experiences of my life.

My mother came up that day, and went with me to a neurologist the next day. What they had found was an area in my brain that had started bleeding. This bleeding had caused me to have seizures, which resulted in my change in vision. I now knew that I had been having seizures back in high school, which had actually been more severe, resulting in my eyes moving uncontrollably. Because of the blood it is hard for the docs to see what is actually causing the bleeding. The spot seen on the MRI is located near the sense center of my brain, which explains the change in vision and smell. The neurologist then sent me to a neurosurgeon (known as NS from now on) in Charlotte.

The NS had me go in for a CT scan to see if he could get a better look at my brain and a chest x-ray, which I guess was to make sure there was nothing in my chest. I waited about two weeks, and got my results from those scans today. Unfortunately the NS still is not sure what is causing the bleeding because of the blood around the area blocking the view. He is now leaning towards it being a vascular malformation, which is a malformation of blood vessels in my left temporal lobe that has been bleeding causing the seizures. He also said there is a possibility of it being a small slow growing tumor, he just can't be sure with the current images of my brain. The pic above is of a vascular malformation called a cavernous angioma, which is what the doc believes is in my head. I picked this image because the location of the malformation looks like it almost in the same place as mine, although I can't remember exactly.

I am now going to wait 6-8 weeks and have another MRI. The NS hopes that by that time my brain will have absorbed some of the blood around the area, and he will be able to get a better look to see if it is a malformation or tumor. Either way I am going to end up having brain surgery sometime in the next three months, whether he knows what it is or not.

I am dealing with this better now than I was a few weeks ago. The support my family and friends have been giving me is more than I could ask for. Karen has also been helping through all this, and I don't know what I would have done without her support. I have not had anymore seizures since the initial few days of seizures, and the only problems I have been having are due to the epilepsy medication I have been taking to prevent future seizures.

I will be posting more in the next few weeks. I promise future posts will not be as grim.