I've been gone for years, I know, but I have a good reason, I think. Years ago I had a low back operation to fix a congenital defect, which ended up being more involved than even the doctor thought. I spent 5 days in the hospital and then was sent home. About a week later, a nurse came for a home visit to check on my incision and found a mess. My incision site was seriously infected and I was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery. By this time, the infection, which was a MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) infection, had surrounded my entire lower spine, and I was running a very high fever. They performed another emergency surgery to clean out the infection, but they found out I had also contracted bacterial meningitis and arachnoiditis, so not only was my surgical site and lower spine infected, my internal spinal column and the sac surrounding my brain were also infected. I was delirious and kept in a medically induced coma so I have no memory of any of this, but it was serious enough that my doctor didn't see how I could make it through the weekend and called my husband and mother and told them to contact the rest of my family so they could come in and say their goodbyes. My mother also called a priest, who performed Last Rites. The doctors were doing everything they could for me and were throwing everything they had at the infections, but nothing was helping. They gave me another combination of drugs and lo and behold, they worked. I was in the ICU and in the medically induced coma for about 2 weeks. When I came to, I had no memory of any of this. Because my fever wouldn't go away, even though it came down, I was kept in the hospital for 2 months. After 3 surgeries, I still had some swelling at the incision site, and unfortunately during one of the surgeries, they nicked my sciatic nerve, so I was left with chronic sciatica to deal with. I was sent to inpatient rehab for 2 weeks because my legs didn't want to work right, but eventually I was deemed fit enough to go home. I had to have 2 more surgeries that year to fix the pins and rods in my back because the infection had literally pushed them out of whack. I still have 6 pins and 3 rods in my back, and my doctor said I will continue to worsen and will eventually need more surgery, but right now we're monitoring it and maintaining it for as long as we can.
The nerve damage and chronic pain are something I've learned to live with, but as a reader, one of the biggest hurdles I've had to overcome is short-term and long-term memory loss due to the brain infection and the high fever I had. I have lost almost all memory of my life up to the time of the first surgery, and because of the short-term memory loss, I forget everyday things, too. The hardest thing to lose, though, is my memory of books and movies that I have read and watched. I had books that I was reading, and ones that I had finished that were waiting on reviews, but I have to read them again because I have no memory at all of what I read. During these years, I had given up reading because I had to re-read so much as I went along that I just gave up. I've been working very hard to try to retrain my brain, but it's a very slow process. Only recently have I been able to really start reading again and enjoy it, although I do have to take a lot of notes for when I inevitably forget things.
All of that being said, I'm alive, and that's something, so I try not to dwell on the bad things. I went through a powerful depression for a very long time, but I'm finally starting to crawl my way out of that. You have no idea how wonderful it is to look forward to things again!
I haven't written any of this because I want people to feel sorry for me. I'm done with self pity, and I don't want pity from anyone else, either. I want to start reviewing books again, and I felt like I should explain why I've been gone for so long. I don't know how I'll do, but I'm still working on my memory and am able to read a couple of books at a time again, as long as I make sure to read a little bit of each one every day. So we'll just see how it goes and take it one day at a time.
If you've managed to read all of this, thank you for hanging in there! LOL
The nerve damage and chronic pain are something I've learned to live with, but as a reader, one of the biggest hurdles I've had to overcome is short-term and long-term memory loss due to the brain infection and the high fever I had. I have lost almost all memory of my life up to the time of the first surgery, and because of the short-term memory loss, I forget everyday things, too. The hardest thing to lose, though, is my memory of books and movies that I have read and watched. I had books that I was reading, and ones that I had finished that were waiting on reviews, but I have to read them again because I have no memory at all of what I read. During these years, I had given up reading because I had to re-read so much as I went along that I just gave up. I've been working very hard to try to retrain my brain, but it's a very slow process. Only recently have I been able to really start reading again and enjoy it, although I do have to take a lot of notes for when I inevitably forget things.
All of that being said, I'm alive, and that's something, so I try not to dwell on the bad things. I went through a powerful depression for a very long time, but I'm finally starting to crawl my way out of that. You have no idea how wonderful it is to look forward to things again!
I haven't written any of this because I want people to feel sorry for me. I'm done with self pity, and I don't want pity from anyone else, either. I want to start reviewing books again, and I felt like I should explain why I've been gone for so long. I don't know how I'll do, but I'm still working on my memory and am able to read a couple of books at a time again, as long as I make sure to read a little bit of each one every day. So we'll just see how it goes and take it one day at a time.
If you've managed to read all of this, thank you for hanging in there! LOL
