Today, I worked a normal morning shift: read and answered email, gave our project webmaster feedback on our website redesign, talked to the\u00a0executive editor for 30 minutes on a seven-item agenda, fixed my\u00a0home office\u00a0Internet, had a catch-up call with our project admin officer, and reviewed our progress on the quarterly report due this month.<\/p>\n
“I can’t believe you had brain surgery less than two months ago, and now you’re talking to me and you’re totally lucid,” the\u00a0admin officer said.<\/p>\n
Yep. It’s only been seven weeks and three days since I had brain surgery.<\/p>\n
The day went on with an afternoon of normal stuff:\u00a0I organized\u00a0paperwork, loaded the Christmas decorations into the car to take to\u00a0storage, heated up some lunch and ate, changed into public clothes, and made the 45-minute drive\u00a0to the oral surgeon\u00a0for the completion of my implant<\/a>.\u00a0More normal errands on the way home, talking to Sara, then answering emails, dinner, re-runs of the The Newsroom<\/em>, etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n All along the way, no one I saw would have guessed that I almost died on Nov. 15<\/a>. Even people who know me can’t tell.<\/p>\n I look normal, I talk normally.<\/p>\n I’m not.<\/p>\n I’m still not right inside.<\/p>\n I can tell that I’m not thinking as quickly. I\u00a0can actually measure it on the Lumosity brain games.<\/p>\n My brain still refuses to read anything longer than a news story – no books allowed. My brain still doesn’t want to hear music. My brain is easily distracted and forgetful. My brain loses its place.<\/p>\n I forgive my brain. It was attacked by an inside job explosion and then by men\u00a0wielding knives<\/a>. It was invaded<\/a> at the deepest levels.<\/p>\n I know it will get better. All the important pieces are intact<\/a>.<\/p>\n For now, though, I have to accept whatever my brain does.<\/p>\n It’s normal.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2012. A normal year is 365 days; 2012 was the last previous non-normal year (otherwise known as leap year).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the first time I’ve been moving at a normal speed for the whole day. Although I didn’t exactly jump out of bed, I woke up around 7:30 a.m. and had a normal morning routine: a shower, coffee and breakfast, my art improv exercise, reading a magazine. A month ago, I couldn’t imagine normalcy … read more The new normal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[52,485,493,471,542,543,504],"class_list":["post-6437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","tag-52","tag-aneurysm","tag-brain","tag-games","tag-normal","tag-normality","tag-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6437"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6449,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions\/6449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jan](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Jan-7-2012-300x151.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n