PERSONAL

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Brain's Breaking

8 years ago801 words

I wrote in a (surprisingly) ∞ recent post ∞ about how I'd travelled for hours on trains to see a neurology specialist who, despite not having seen my brain scans, just dismissed me as a hypochondriac... I got a phone call from that neurology hospital just now telling me to expect another appointment soon; it seems he actually got and looked at my scans finally and changed his mind about there being nothing to worry about.

I've been having a lot of visual distortions recently, feelings of dissociation, and that feeling you get when you stand up too fast and blood takes time to rush to your head; that's been happening constantly, even when I'm sitting.

The issue I have (I can't remember if I talked about it before) is a cyst in the pineal gland (or perhaps it's a tumour). These pineal cysts aren't rare, and they're often found incidentally rather than causing any symptoms, but mine's pressing against a thing called the cerebral aqueduct, which drains cerebrospinal fluid between the 'ventricles' of the brain: 'hollow' spaces that produce/store the fluid. When the aqueduct is constricted, so too is fluid flow, leading to a buildup; the ventricles swell in size, squashing the brain; a condition called hydrocephalus. It can cause all kinds of issues, including blindness and death.

When my own abnormalities were found incidentally a while ago, I had no symptoms at all... But in the weeks since then, my vision has indeed been getting... strange. It's impossible to describe... When I close my eyes, I can see a sort of asterisk shape on the left briefly; as if I'm seeing my iris or retina or something in the same way you see images 'burned into' your eye by light. That greenish-purple effect that throbs and fades. Sometimes, the 'top part' of my visual field becomes contaminated with blobs of darkness, or something; they come and go seemingly at random.

When I went to see the optician recently to have an eye test, he told me that my optic nerve looked odd. If intercranial pressure increases, the brain can press against the optic nerve; that's probably what's happening here.

Chances are I will need brain surgery after all. It's an odd thing, that... All my life, I've had an intense phobia of brains; couldn't look at even diagrams with them, and disembodied brains filled my nightmares. A part of me 'knew' that I'd die of a brain tumour one day... Perhaps Life is just a story, with foreshadowing? I've also recently been feeling like I'm in the sunset stage of my life, at the end. I wonder if that's foreshadowing too.

If it is... what was the point of this life? It seems like it's been such a lonely waste.

The hardest part now is waiting. Seems I have to wait at least two weeks just to get a letter telling me when I might have an appointment with a pineal specialist who'll just talk to me about what comes next.

I'm concerned about the wait not just because I could die or go blind in the interim, but because university restarts in late September and I absolutely don't want to miss that because I'm having or recovering from brain surgery! The first couple of weeks are crucial; they're where groups and friendships form, where things are established. I want to meet my new housemates when we're all strangers to each other, rather than missing that and meeting them all when they know each other. I want to join clubs and societies at the same time as other newcomers for the same reason. If I'm not present for lectures, the person I sat with all last academic year will find someone else to sit with... even if she says she won't. I wouldn't want her to be alone.

I made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow before I got the phone call about this, so I'll ask then if there's any possibility of speeding things up since my symptoms have become more severe. I suppose it's just a matter of waiting now...

It's hard enough though enduring the isolation; all my time alone with my thoughts. Now that my mind's polluted once again with thoughts of how its vehicle is broken, that makes the daily endurance just that much more of a challenge.

A big part of me just wants to embrace death, to just not be alive anymore. Before I got that call, I was asking Google why I shouldn't kill myself, as I occasionally do (many of the reasons it gives just make me sigh because they're things I can't do or lack). I will of course hang on as best I can, but sigh, what a wonderful life I don't lead.