A Tale of Two Mondays: Recovery Days 3 and 10

[I've realized that I'll have to do these posts without regard to chronological order, as there is too much to cover.]

A complicated concept

The first Monday after my surgery, I toddled down to the kitchen for some brekkie. Almost every weekday, I’ve had the same repast: a hard-boiled egg (already cooked) with some hummus and a bowl of yogurt with some berries, cinnamon, hemp hearts, and a sprinkling of chocolate whey protein. (So far, my stomach has felt normal post-surgery, though I do have moments of ravenousness.)

It struck me that the berries, which we just bought, had not been washed yet. The other accoutrement of the yogurt lay scattered in three different places. Three. And I repeat: The berries had not been washed yet. That involved taking them to the sink, running water over them, shaking the container of excess moisture…. My god, I need to lie down.

That was it. I couldn’t do it. Fortunately, Brian was working half-days from home, so he took care of the whole washing and dumping things in a bowl process.

Now I should explain, lest you start to believe that craniotomies like mine must addle the gray matter and render yogurt assembly difficult, that it was not that it seemed tricky. I had just become aware of all of the tiny bits of effort and decision that go into such a simple-seeming process and my mind became overwhelmed. All surgeries will physically exhaust you; brain surgery has the added edge of making you aware of how and when you exert mental effort, too. Those are “executive function” cognitive processes, and when you’ve had brain surgery or a traumatic brain injury, they get disrupted. Planning, memory, prioritizing, assessing, locating---all of those things that need to happen become effortful tasks in their own right and quickly wear a person out. Glad my time in that zone is temporary.

Jump to the following Monday. Brian has left me alone for the first time to go to work. I decide to use the stove to make oatmeal with the liquid whey produced from making yogurt the week before. (Making yogurt, as opposed to assembling yogurt parfait ingredients, is ridiculously simple, so I did that a few days after surgery.) The end result was that I managed to feed myself properly. I did, however, make three mistakes during the oatmeal process:

1.       I had a boil-over with the whey and salt.

2.       I forgot to start a timer when I put the oats in the pot, so I’m not sure how long they cooked.

3.       I poured my coffee when I started the boil and brought it into the next room. While I was wandering around waiting for the boil and oats-cooking (untimed), I completely forgot about the coffee, so it was cold by the time I remembered it. Microwaved coffee is not the same.

So, I didn’t burn myself or burn the house down. At least one or two of the above minor mistakes I probably would’ve made before surgery, too, so clearly I’ve made progress.