I liked Amanda's idea of choosing a general theme to describe what's moving her this Monday, so I jacked it -- but at least I am honest about my thievery!

In the wake of a miserable last week, I've decided to give in and surrender to the forces beyond my reach that wreak havoc in my life. I've come to the conclusion that sometimes it's better to actually lose the war because in doing so, one is forced to come to grips with one's weaknesses and limitations and to find a way to work with, through, or around them. Such is the case with my cluster headaches and seizures. And so, Brain, you win this time! With white flag in hand, I surrender to the power of your electrical impulses. For today, at least. . .

White Flag by Dido




Sweet Surrender by John Denver




Surrender by Elvis Presley

It was fun being a baby boomer until now. Some of the artists of the 60's and 70's are revising their hits with new lyrics to accommodate aging Baby Boomers. They include:

• Herman's Hermits - Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Walker.

• Ringo Starr - I Get By With a Little Help From Depends.

• The Bee Gees - How Can You Mend a Broken Hip.

• Bobby Darin - Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' a Flash.

• Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face.

• Johnny Nash - I Can't See Clearly Now.

• Paul Simon - Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver.

• The Commodores - Once, Twice, Three Times to the Bathroom.

• Procol Harem - A Whiter Shade of Hair.

• Leo Sayer - You Make Me Feel Like Napping.

• The Temptations - Papa's Got a Kidney Stone.

• Abba - Denture Queen.

• Tony Orlando - Knock 3 Times On The Ceiling If You Hear Me Fall.

• Helen Reddy - I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore.

• Leslie Gore - It's My Procedure, and I'll Cry If I Want To.

• Willie Nelson - On the Commode Again

Of course, I can't relate to any of them, LMAO!


2. Something to look forward to. Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that I am crazy for documentaries. My favorite documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, has a new 12-hour, 6-part film that will air on PBS this fall! The National Parks: America's Best Idea, "is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. As such, it follows in the tradition of Burns’s exploration of other American inventions, such as baseball and jazz" (source).


3. Words of wisdom for the week:

“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” -- John Quincy Adams

This has not been a good week for me, but I refuse to get on the pity pot. Not yet, anyway. The Brain has been giving me some serious grief since Tuesday night, with each day getting progressively worse and the seizures stronger. I can't eat because eating is the trigger this time around; I'm hungry, but I know that as soon as I try to eat something, I'll have a seizure. And as bad as the nausea from the seizures has been, I'd much rather have a growling stomach, thank you! I've already had one this morning but am hopeful that it was a fluke and that the rest of the day will be seizure free. So for now, at least, the glass is half full.


4. Anticipation. Back in June, I posted about having chosen a designer to make me a new blog layout only to discover that her queue was closed until sometime in July. Well, July passed and the queue didn't open. And August is nearly gone without the queue opening, either. On the positive side, I'd say this is a testament to the quality of her work -- she is obviously very, very busy. On the anticipation side, I'm anxiously waiting for a turn to get in line! Just yesterday I learned that the queue will reopen mid-September, when she brings in a partner to help with all the work. Yeah -- I may have a newly designed blog before the year is over!

5. Feline Humor. Cats are goofy creatures, but they sure do provide plenty of entertainment!

Just a few things I've been thinking about . . .


What makes The Brain think it's the boss?
Last week was a real humdinger from start to finish. With so much unusual excitement going on, I should have been prepared for The Brain to take control and to push me into the passenger seat. At least this time The Brain held off on the electrical surges until Thursday night; the only bad thing about it waiting so long is that the surges are worse than normal -- as if seizures are ever normal per se. I don't like it when The Brain takes over, but that's life; I'll continue to deal with it as best I can.


Why are people so willing to believe what they hear without bothering to investigate the facts?


Watching the debate over health care reform devolve from discussion to organized shouting matches has made me pull out my much used and well loved copy of John Stewart Mill's essay On Liberty and to reread his discussion of the Tyranny of the Majority, because I see its bud fully flowering on this single issue in a way that it hasn't for quite some time.

The "people" who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.

When a group, whether numerically greater or not, gains enough power to assert its authority over others and uses that power to silence dissenting voices, we have Tyranny of the Majority. Since tyranny is the antithesis of liberty, and something that Americans take an inordinate amount of pride in "removing" from the world, why do we allow it to happen in our own back yard?

Among other things, controlled experiments on tyranny have shown that

• Tyranny can be implemented and exercised by normal people.
• Tyranny is more likely when people are competing for insufficient resources.
• Tyranny is more likely when the tyrants have little empathy for the tyrannized.
• Tyranny is more likely by stealth by those in power than by coup. (Source)
  

The folks who are showing up at town hall meetings with the sole purpose of shouting down their elected officials or acting as the spokeshole for a special interest group (insurance industry, pharmaceutical company, et al) are, for the most part, quite normal people, I'm sure. Yet once they have had their daily dose of Rush and O'Reilly, they feel empowered enough to behave like tyrants, silencing all who disagree with them, in a controlled environment such as a town hall meeting.

To say that people are competing for insufficient resources in these difficult economic times is, perhaps, to use an old cliche, the understatement of the century. Because of fear mongering further compounded by the fact that the average American is too lazy to search for factual information independently and thus, like so many lemmings, is willing to throw himself off the cliff without cause.

Empathy is having the capacity to understand, be sensitive to, and feel the experience of someone else. When the economy is bad and people are concerned about making their own mortgage payments, putting food on their own tables, and meeting the needs of their own families, empathy often gets lost in the daily struggle. The problem is that the same people who struggle to make ends meet but have health insurance are the very ones who ought to have the greatest empathy for their uninsured fellow Americans who find themselves having to choose between paying for a doctor visit or a prescription and making a house payment or buying groceries!

The special interest groups on both sides of the health care reform issue resort to stealth by spreading misinformation anonymously. It doesn't take long before the lemmings leap into panic mode and once they pick up the ball, the lobbyists can sit back and enjoy the show as they pat themselves on the back for a job well done; they know that to stage a successful coup, they need only to strike fear into the hearts of the lemmings who can be relied upon to take them at their word without ever bothering to research the facts themselves.

God protect us all from the lemmings of the world irrespective of the side of the political spectrum on which they sit!


What am I missing?

So my laptop is up and running again. All the software has been reinstalled, the file folders created, the desktop organized and decorated just the way I like it. It's even running much faster than it was pre-hacker / Trojan. I should be happy, right? Bleh -- that would work in someone else's world, not mine! Something is missing, I just know it! The problem is that I can't put my finger on what I've forgotten, and it's making me crazy. You know what it's like when you can't remember a song or movie title and it sticks in your head until you do? It's like that with the missing software. I know that I neglected to reinstall something, but what? I don't know! I guess it will hit me on the head like a sledgehammer when I go to use it and can't find it -- then I'll know what I forgot to install!



"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." -- Thomas Paine

Tired and REtired accurately describes me for the past couple of days. No sitting around munching on bon-bons and watching soap operas all day here. So much for the glory days of retirement!

Despite really looking forward to the Thursday Thirteen meme, I just didn't have time to get to it today. Not that this is necessarily bad; it just means that I'm having another good day and have the energy and concentration to get some more work done. I might could get used to this!

The visit with my wunnerful wunnerful neurologist, Dr. S, went well. We're changing my anti-seizure medications again as the Dilantin has never really reached the level in my blood stream that it should in order to work effectively. Instead of continuing to increase the dosage of a drug that just ain't cuttin' the mustard as my Grandma used to say, I'll go back on Topamax. I did have some issues with Topamax causing brain fog a while back; however, I'm no longer teaching and required to have unfailing mental acuity on demand. I'll take a bit of fogginess over clusters of seizures any old day. Besides, Topamax has three delightful side effects from which I gained some additional benefit in the past and hope to see again:

• it causes weight loss
• it is also used to treat and prevent migraines
• it will allow me to stop taking two, possibly three, additional medications

The next couple of weeks will be challenging as I take both the Topamax and Dilantin until I reach the previous dosage of 100 mg of Topamax twice daily and start to wean off the Dilantin. Been there, done that -- at least half a dozen times -- and will survive it once again.

Post about 5 favorite things from the past week. It can be anything that tickled your fancy: favorite quotes, posts, happenings, scriptures, recipes, pictures, great internet finds, etc., etc. Be as detailed as you like, the more detail the more fun for those of us visiting. Susanne, the hostess, just asks that it be kept family friendly. Click here to play along with us.


1. This week, I'm grateful for my baby sister and America's Got Talent. I've had a week full of seizures, most of them worse than normal, so I haven't been feeling as optimistic as I usually do. In fact, I slept away much of the week as always happens when The Brain takes charge. My sister called me yesterday to check in and knowing how much I enjoyed Britain's Got Talent, she asked what I thought of this season of America's Got Talent. Well, D-U-H, I didn't even know that it was on! After we finished chatting, I visited the NBC website and got caught up with the show. I have two favorites so far: Barbara Padilla, whose YouTube videos have the embed feature disabled, and




2. When the Amazing Egyptian Dude was acid washing, cleaning, then refilling our swimming pool on Sunday, he sent me to Home Depot for some additional supplies. Since the pool supplies are in the garden center, it provided me with the perfect opportunity to look at house plants. I was thrilled to find a new orchid plant for just $6.98!



3. Camry has fully recovered from her spay surgery and is back to her old tricks. Having had cats all my life, I know that they are fascinated by bags and boxes. Camry takes this fascination to the level of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, though! No box, no bag is safe when Camry is around.


Typically, we reuse the plastic shopping bags for the trash cans in the bathrooms and bedrooms. But after seeing Camry's latest misadventure, I'll have to remember to cut the handles so that if she grabs one, she doesn't become entangled in it.

4. My brother-in-law makes some mean felafel so when he made a huge batch on Wednesday and shared a freezer bag full of the raw mix with us, I was a quite the happy camper. Egyptians eat felafel any time, but it's especially popular as a breakfast food, like this:


Clockwise on the plate, starting at 9 o'clock is felafel, tomato, gargeer (I think this is watercress in English, but I'm not sure), parsley (beneath the gargeer), pickled turnip, and chili peppers. A dish of tahini sits at the center of the plate.

5. I am really looking forward to tomorrow! A local Shakespeare Company has a summer stock type show season at a park on the beach. Attendance is free, and the park has a picnic area. Ever since I had the brain surgery, we haven't gone. I decided that we will go this year and invited one of the Third Grade BFFs and spouse, along with some other friends and family to join us. I'll do my best to remember to take the camera along with me and get some shots of us as we picnic and enjoy Julius Caesar.

Random Thought #1

Listening to Senator Jeff Sessions' opening statement at the start of Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearing yesterday got me riled. I haven't yet figured out which planet the Senator lived on before gracing us with his presence, but it must be one with a society like the one in Lois Lowery's juvenile novel, The Giver. I still haven't decided if his comments are more hypocrital, disingenuous, or idiotic; all three are viable options.

As an attorney himself, how could Senator Sessions not know that everything we read is understood, interpreted, and processed through the lens that informs our lives? Meaning has never been the same for all people in all times in all places. If this were true, humanity would never have progressed! There would have been no flowering of democracy in Greece, no birth of Christianity in the Middle East, no Renaissance, no Age of Reason, no French or American Revolutons. Without a change in understanding and interpretation, Martin Luther would have had no reason to nail his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg; "the shot heard round the world" would not have been necessary, and the U.S. could well have remained part of the British Empire until its collapse; the notion that race determines a human being's worthiness of freedom might well have remained the norm in America, and Rosa Parks wouldn't have felt the need to refuse to give up her seat on the bus. As you can imagine, the list could go on ad infinitum.

The ever evolving landscape of human experience is what makes literature, music, and art great. The ability of a piece to have meaning across time, language, religion, and culture is based on the fact that meaning isn't the same for all readers, listeners, or viewers; what an individual gets out of a work is determined by his or her understanding and experience which, in turn, inform his or her interpretation. It is this fact that accounts for the volumes of books written about Shakespeare's plays, Mozart's music, and Raphael's art. Shakespeare's plays, Mozart's concertos, and Raphael's paintings haven't changed, but the knowledge, understanding, and experience of the people at the point in time in which they are read, viewed, or heard has; thus, the interpretations of these artists' work will change as well. It is also this fact that accounts for the various translations of the Bible; words translated from the original Hebrew and Greek are assigned meaning in another language based on the translator's understanding and analysis of context. Luckily for those of us living in 21st century America, interpretation and understanding of the law has evolved as well.

Senator Sessions established himself as an authority on the judicial system thus:

I have been an active litigator in federal courts for the majority of my professional life. I have tried cases in private practice, as a federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice, and as Attorney General of the State of Alabama.

The Constitution and our great heritage of law are things I care deeply about — they are the foundation of our liberty and prosperity.

Good for you, Senator Sessions! I applaud your dedication to the Constitution and its principles. But I do have a question for you. How is it possible that you have achieved such a remarkable CV without also recognizing that your interpretation of the law is, at the very least, influenced by your understanding of connotation and denotation in language coupled with your values, beliefs, and experience?

Random Thought #2

Betty's health is improving at last. She was moved yesterday from the hospital to a rehab center, where she will stay for two weeks while she gets an IV antibiotic for the treatment of a staph infection in her lung. I felt horrible for agreeing to the placement, no matter how temporary, because I promised Bob that I would never put her in a nursing home situation. Unfortunately, there is no alternative available to her until the antibiotics course is finished. There is, however, some good news here. The nursing home / rehab facility is just a couple of blocks away from my house, so visiting her daily will be super easy.

Random Thought #3

I don't know what got The Brain's knickers in a twist yesterday, but It decided that I was so deserving of some good old electro-shock therapy that It delivered a total of 8 seizures throughout the day. Each succeeding seizure was worse than the predecessor so that by the end of the day, I had spent more of it asleep than awake, more of it nauseated than not. Bleh! I could have done without all that excitement. My fingers are crossed that The Brain feels confident enough in its preeminent power once again that It will practice -- are you ready for this one? -- empathetic justice on me today!

I don't mind Mondays, usually, but I'm not looking forward to the start of this one. It's shortly after 3 a.m. here in delightfully cool Southern California, and I have been awake since just after midnight. I want to sleep -- I need to sleep, but I can't. It's probably because Saturday and Sunday were seizureful days, which means that I got plenty of sleep on both. Still, with everything that's going to start happening here in just a few hours, it would be a good idea for me to have a little sleep under my belt. So what's going to happen in my world today?

1. Camry's spay appointment begins the day and boy, am I glad for this one! I have to drop her off at the clinic before 8:30. She will stay overnight, and I'll get her tomorrow morning. That should also give me time to find the lizard that she dragged into the bathroom yesterday. My cats are all indoor; they never, ever go outside. Is it any wonder, then, that I freaked when I saw a rather large lizard, with only a stump of a tail remaining, trying to escape from Camry by hiding under the bathroom rug?! What I want to know is how in the hell did a lizard get inside my house?

2. Once Camry is dropped off, I'll come home and toss in a load of laundry. I had planned to do some over the weekend, but The Brain had other plans for us. I don't know why the Amazing Egyptian Dude thinks he needs socks, anyway. Dude, you come from the desert -- put on a pair of sandals like me!

3. If I don't have any seizures between now and 10:30, I'll head up the freeway to my dad's house for a brief visit and to take him out for lunch since I didn't get to do it yesterday. To avoid the traffic that heads my way starting around 3:00, I will be back on the freeway and returning home right after lunch. If the seizures continue, though, I will be staying at home, probably doing what I ought to be doing now, which is sleeping.

4. The Amazing Egyptian Dude's niece is, at this very moment, in transit from Cairo. She called about 45 minutes ago to say that she is currently in Amsterdam awaiting her connecting flight to Los Angeles. Her plane should land at LAX around 3:15, so the Amazing Egyptian Dude will take my car and go back up the same freeway that I took to my dad's house and pick her up. By the time she gets through customs and collects her luggage, they will get back on the freeway at prime traffic time. This will give me ample time to change the sheets on the bed in the guest room and get it ready for her. And when that is finished, I will cook something for dinner.

In keeping with the whole Egyptian concept of hospitality, the whole family will be going to airport to pick up the niece, everyone except me, that is. I seldom go to the airport unless I'm the one who'll be getting on or off a plane. As soon as they arrive at home, it's customary to have a meal waiting for the traveler. Everything that Egyptians do involves food of some kind. I'll have to figure out something to cook that will feed everyone, probably pasta and salad. We'll see.

At some point in the day, I need to head over to the college to buy my textbooks and pick up my parking pass because tomorrow is the first day of summer school!

We have a family owned and operated business that keeps us pretty busy. Each of us takes care of a certain aspect of the business and together, we keep it running fairly smoothly most of the time. And then, there are those days when The Brain gets in my business and prevents me from taking care of business, thus adding stress to everyone else's business. Such has been the case for the past two weeks.

Iman, our newlywed daughter, takes off every other Friday because her Awesome Egyptian Dude, has the day off from his job. (Note that my Egyptian Dude is Amazing, hers is Awesome.) Under normal circumstances, this isn't a big deal because I am in the office picking up the slack that her absence leaves. But when The Brain asserts its authority, things get really interesting on these Fridays. Like yesterday, for example.

The day began with a headache. Not a bad one -- certainly not bad enough to cause me to test out the newly acquired oxygen tank, not even bad enough for me to take more than 2 Ibuprofen to knock it down. The dull thumping was definitely something I could deal with, and deal with it I did. I processed orders for shipping, answered telephone calls, and shuffled paperwork all around for several hours without incident. The Brain maintained its presence but instead of taking center stage, played overseer to my activities from behind the scenes; however, The Brain couldn't be without the spotlight for very long. And so it was that during a phone conversation with my favorite aunt, The Brain, flipped the switch and sent a jolt of electricity through my body. Thankfully when the seizure came, I was not the one talking; I was listening. When The Brain decided that playing shock therapy was no longer fun, the usual coughing fit began.

A cough, cough here. My aunt began to sense that something wasn't right.

"Your headache isn't making you cough like that, is it?" she wondered.

"No," I answered honestly. "My headache isn't that bad, really." My family worries too much about me, and this call wasn't about me, no matter what The Brain thought. My aunt returned to the conversation, and The Brain returned to the coughing.

A cough, cough there. And my aunt pauses. "Are you sure that you're ok?" How do I tell her, without freaking her out, that I had a seizure? She worries enough already and, like my other family members, knows that stress is the typical trigger for my seizures. If I tell her that I had one while she was talking to me, she'd end the conversation, worried that she had been the cause. "I'm fine," I reassured her. But The Brain had other ideas.

Here a cough, there a cough, everywhere a cough, cough. "Carleen," my aunt said nervously, "something is wrong! Why are you coughing so much?"

"It's nothing, really. I had a seizure, and the coughing is The Brain's way of letting me know that it's finished. No biggie," I told her. A seizure that is followed by so much coughing is one that requires a nap right away, and I knew that; however, I was not about to cut off the conversation and leave my aunt worrying.

I fought the need to sleep and finished the conversation. It was mid-afternoon and I knew that if I took a nap at that point, I wouldn't sleep at night. The Amazing Egyptian Dude, who had wandered in and out of the office during the whole thing, packed me up and took me home as soon as the call ended, hoping that I would give in to The Brain's demands and sleep.

I did fall asleep, but not before an amazing thing happened. In Greek mythology, Zeus gives birth to his daughter Venus in a most unusual way: fully formed and already an adult, Venus emerged from her father's head. I am now convinced that The Brain studied Greek mythology a little too much in college because,


after intense labor that included four more seizures, a Diva was born yesterday. Why? Because The Brain is convinced that it's

• Gawd, the heat is back! Camry, the otherwise loveable kitty, is in heat again. This time, though, she's gone beyond the chirping of a week or so ago and has moved up to the full on cat calling. She rolls all over the floor, yowls at my feet, and walks with her hind end up in the air as if it's on display for every Tom in the household. Unfortunately for her, the only Tom is Marlowe, who was neutered several years ago and would rather play chase the mouse than set up house. I keep telling myself that it's only a few more days until her spay appointment, but I don't know if I can last that long. I had completely forgotten how utterly obnoxious female cats in heat can be!



• The Brain is still throwing its weight around. I spent much of the weekend fighting off headaches. Sunday looked really promising, as I didn't wake up with a headache as I have been; however, the headache's kissing cousin showed up after I had been awake for about an hour. Same thing on Monday. I woke up with a headache shortly after one, had a seizure at 1:24 a.m., then another at 3:48 a.m. Although I had been headache free since about noon, another seizure came at 7:16 p.m. You know, The Brain is beginning to remind me of those crazy dictators in North Korea and Iran -- throw its weight around long enough to make me nervous, then slink away to watch the worry that follows. Thankfully, Dr. S will be on call for a week starting on the 19th, and that's when she's going to do her best to squeeze me in to see her.
  


• I'm not a big fan of Western movies. Never have been. I wasn't inspired to watch them when, as a kid, I learned that the Red Ryder Round-Up, the annual rodeo in my dad's hometown of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, was held in honor of Fred Harman, an elderly man I knew who also happened to be a famous author and illustrator of a comic book series of the same name. Heck, Mr. Harman's creation has maintained its fame thanks to one young boy's obsession with getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Still, I wasn't interested in watching cowboy movies. Even when John Wayne filmed The Cowboys in Pagosa and my grandmother called to tell us that she had lunch with him, I wasn't really interested in seeing the movie. I've seen it since then, though. Anyway, the only Western movie that I can honestly say I feel is worth watching is Lonesome Dove, based on Larry McMurtry's novel of the same name. I saw the movie when it first aired on television, then bought and read the book. It was every bit as awesome as the movie. So when I learned that a 20th anniversary airing of Lonesome Dove was on this weekend, I watched it twice -- between naps!
  


• I've been itching to change my blog template and design. I really want a 3-column design that has the post portion sandwiched between two sidebar columns, but I haven't found one that I like yet. If only I weren't graphically challenged, I'd design one myself! Alas, until I overcome the challenge of the puny-pixelled or win the lottery and can afford to pay for a customized one, the quest for a freebie continues.


• Am I the only one who thinks the whole David Letterman vs. Sarah Palin, et al is ridiculous? Considering that the economy is floundering, we're fighting a couple of wars in foreign countries, North Korea is issuing thinly-veiled nuclear threats, Iran is in an upheaval over the possibility of a rigged election, and we can't figure out how to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable medical care, don't you think that Governor Palin's rhetoric would be better served addressing some of these issues instead of a couple of jokes made by a late night talk show host? If this is a taste of what's to come should she become the Republican front-runner for the next presidential election, I want to buy stock in the production company that handles the soap opera version!
  

Coming out of a seizure and happily filled with Cafergot, I decided to scout around for some interesting memes to play with. While surfing, I found this cool widget -- is it a widget? I don't know for sure! -- that tells how many people in the US have the same name as you. As if I didn't already know it, my suspicion about my uniqueness is now officially confirmed!

About my first name:

• There are 6,132 people in the U.S. with the first name Carleen.
• Statistically the 2397th most popular first name.
• More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Carleen are female. (Ya think?!)
  

About my last name:

• There are 5,549 people in the U.S. with the last name Ibrahim.
• Statistically the 6414th most popular last name.

Put them together, and you get this:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 1 or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

How unique are you?

After a rather nasty seizure last night, I crashed on the couch until the Amazing Egyptian Dude came home. I visited with him for a few minutes before falling back to sleep, and he left me there, zonked out and blissfully unaware of anything except the joy of an adventure in Lullabye Land. Because I need a "nest" of pillows to properly support my neck and prevent headaches, he doesn't like to leave me asleep on the couch unless I fell asleep there after a seizure; then, he won't wake me for anything.

It's currently 4:17 a.m., and I have been awake since shortly before 2. If you've read my blog before, you'll know that this isn't anything unusual for me. Except that today it is -- it REALLY is! I would have stayed asleep had it not been for the fact that an unusually loud and unfamiliar sound woke me up. It took me several minutes and opening the back door to finally figure out what it was:





I'm not afraid of thunder and lightning but living in Southern California does make me unaccustomed to hearing and seeing it. The sound and light show continued for a good 30 minutes and at one point, the thunder was so close, so strong, and so loud that it rattled the windows in my house! Interesting, during the entire performance, not a single drop of rain fell!

This is earthquake weather, peeps, I'm tellin' ya!

Way back in the day, I began this blog as way to distract myself from the daily ups and downs of living with a degenerative illness that sometimes knocks me soundly on my butt. It took some time, but it has now become a much enjoyed part of my daily routine -- except on the days when headaches and seizures plague me like they have for most of this week.

I have made a conscious decision to avoid life on the pity pot. In this regard, I am absolutely Stoic. We often associate a lack of emotion with the Stoics, but these guys were far from emotionless; they just chose to avoid emotionalism through the use of logic, reason, and reflection. Like the Stoics, I know that I have no control over Chiari or what it does to me; however, I do have control over how I deal with it. I can make a conscious decision to perch perpetually on the pity pot, or I can choose to plop on the pity pot only as needed and to work with what I have and who I am now to the best of my ability the rest of the time. I nearly always choose the latter.

This past week, however, has seriously tried my determination to avoid feeling sorry for myself. I've had the hurts-to-breathe headaches every single day since Sunday. Thankfully, the medication has helped to bring them under control fairly quickly; however, they are so debilitating that it's hard for me to clear my head of the fog they bring and to focus on tasks. Add seizures, which I had on Tuesday and Wednesday, to the mix, and I become a real mess, really quickly.

To deal with the down time, I've learned to write my meme posts way ahead of time whenever possible and to schedule them to go live on the appropriate days. This makes my blog look like all is peachy keen in my little world, even when I'm curled up in a fetal position on the couch trying desperately to make the world go away. Unfortunately, what I can't do is respond to comments from the couch. And that is the whole purpose behind this post.

Peeps, it's been a miserable week, and I haven't been able to respond with any regularity to your comments. I am truly sorry. I know how important comments are in the blogosphere, really I do, and I appreciate every single one that is left for me. Please don't think that I'm not grateful or that I am ignoring what you have to say; this is not the case. If I don't reply to comments, it's because I'm looking for the toilet paper while I sit on the pity pot or because I'm playing roly-poly on the couch and haven't found a way to uncurl myself and still breathe.

So, here's to the end of the week:

I live with a degenerative and progressive brain condition called an Arnold Chiari Malformation. My Thursday Thirteen for today was inspired by Thom, who didn't realize that I had had brain surgery and dug around here to find out why. Here's a list of 13 facts about ACM.

1. Arnold Chiari Malformation is the medical name for what I like to call a brain fart. In a nutshell, people who have ACM have brains that are too big to fit properly inside their skulls. Although I like to think this is just because we're so doggone smart, medical evidence does not support this hypothesis. Because the brain doesn't fit like it should, the tonsils (foramen magnum) hangs down, outside the cavity of the skull, and into the spinal canal.
2. ACM is a real pain in the butt. . .er, head! The spinal canal is made just big enough to hold the spinal cord so when a protruding piece of brain scoots down in there, life can get really complicated. Things like killer headaches, dizziness, nausea, vertigo, tingling sensations, difficulty swallowing, double vision, difficulty hearing, balance issues, and insomnia are just a few of the symptoms that ACM triggers and that ACM patients deal with on a daily basis.
   
3. Size does not matter with ACM. Some people have very small protrusions and suffer considerable pain, while others may have a larger protrusion and never have a symptom. In my case, a chunk measuring 8 mm -- not really big, but definitely not small -- sits in my spinal canal. If it hadn't been for the fact that I suddenly began having headaches so painful that it hurt to breathe, I would have never known that I had a problem.
   
4. What comes out, can't go back in. If the brain breaks free of the dura mater, the protective membrane that surrounds it, it can never be put back inside. The solution to this problem is surgery. To allieviate the pressure that this piece of brain puts on the spinal cord, decompression surgery, typically composed of three parts (craniectomy, laminectomy, and duraplasty), is the most widely recognized treatment.
   
5. If undiagnosed and treated, ACM can cause paralysis or death. Dr. G, Medical Examiner, part of the Discovery Health Network's programming, had an episode about a young man whose ACM was undiagnosed and who died because the brain protrusion pinched his spinal cord.
   
6. No known cause or cure. Although many physicians believe that ACM is a hereditory problem, there is no definitive proof of it. Nobody in my family has the problem except me, but Julie Carter, a Chiari activist, and all three of her daughters have it. If you're a fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you might be familiar with the Carter Family; they received a home makeover from ABC a couple of years ago.
   
7. Classified as a rare disorder by the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). What this means is that ACM affects less than 200,000 people in the U.S. population. Ok, so this just means that I'm special -- I can live with that!
8. I'm a Zipperhead! What's a Zipperhead, you want to know? That's the nickname that Chiari patients call a decompressed Chiarian. After the surgery, the back of your head looks like its been closed with a zipper, and that's where the nickname comes from.
   
9. Getting a diagnosis is not easy. Because ACM triggers so many different and seemingly unrelated symptoms, most ACM patients don't get the proper diagnosis for many years. This was my case. The problem was clearly present in my early teens, but I was shuffled back and forth from the ENT to the family doctor to a gastroenterologist. Back in those days, the MRI was not available and since it is the now the way that most people are diagnosed, I can't blame any of the doctors who treated my symptoms without getting to their root cause. I just had to wait until technology caught up with them.
10. Decompression surgery can alleviate some of the symptoms, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because of #4, surgery doesn't solve the problem; however, it did help to control the symptoms better. After I had surgery, the headaches occurred less frequently, which is good. I still have problems with double-vision, my balance is so bad that my neurologist joked how it's a good thing that I don't drink because I would never pass the standard police drunk test (heel-to-toe walking a straight line), my depth perception is so off that I can't see well enough to walk down a flight of stairs or even a curb without falling, and I have complex-partial seizures that come from the right parietal lobe of my brain. The remaining symptoms may sound bad, but I manage to live a relatively "normal" life with them.
    
11. ACM is more common in women than in men. I like to think that this is just because we're naturally smarter, so our brains are naturally bigger! It's not likely that the medical community supports my findings, though.
    
12. Roseanne Cash, daughter of country music legend Johnny Cash, is also a Zipperhead. She had decompression surgery in December of 2007. Maybe it was ACM that was causing her "Seven Year Ache." Ok, that was a very bad joke!
    
13. ACM is an invisible illness. Because people can't see the piece of brain that hangs out in the spinal canal, they often misjudge a patient's reaction to the symptoms. Our society is trained to look for visible symptoms of an illness -- watery eyes and sneezing for allergies, red bumps for chicken pox, coughing and a stuffy nose for a cold, etc. -- and when none are present, judgment of the patients who suffer from invisible illnesses tends to be rather harsh. Perhaps because my invisible illness involves The Brain, that most sacred of internal organs (muscle just doesn't sound as dramatic here, sorry), I am treated far more kindly than someone who has Lupus, for example. This is just plain wrong!

I hope that my list has enlightened your world. If you want to know more about ACM, my symptoms, or decompression surgery, there are lots of links in my sidebar.

If you'd like to join in on the Thursday Thirteen fun, click here.

I've come to the conclusion that I don't like my brain. My mind? I like it quite a bit, but the hard drive where my mind lives and the motherboard that operates it are currently on my sh*t list. BIG TIME!

I didn't have as many seizures yesterday as I had on the previous two, which is always a good thing. Still, although there were fewer electrical misfiring episodes, they happened -- four times to be precise. As a result, I spent much of yesterday trying to determine exactly what had triggered the power surges this time. And the more I thought about it, the more clueless I became.

If turning 50 in 15 days were a big deal to me, I suppose that I could attribute the seizures to a belated midlife crisis since I never really had one in my thirties. Remember folks, a midlife crisis happens at the halfway mark of life and although some of us may want to be around when we're 100, the mid-point for most of us occurs around 35. Besides, Dante Alighieri already set the bar for us way back in the day -- with the midlife crisis that led him to make that famous trip to Hell:

"Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost."
(Inferno I.1-3)

But to be honest, turning 50 doesn't phase me in the least. I got over all that age trauma when I hit 30 so that by the time 40 rolled around, I was happy to be alive and didn't care how old I was anymore! Hitting the Golden Years, I've discovered, is actually something to look forward to.

With age comes privilege. We tend to make excuses for the embarrassing behavior of "older" folks because, well, they're old; their biological time clocks are running in reverse as they make their way toward a second childhood. Don't you remember the Sphinx's riddle from Oedipus?

What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?

Man starts out on all fours in the crawling stage, learns to walk on two legs as he matures, and in old age uses on a cane for assistance, thus regressing or moving back to a period of reliance on others. Maybe when I'm 50, I can crank up the car radio when CCR's "Bad Moon Rising" comes on the oldies station and my daughter won't be embarrassed anymore. She can, after all, chalk up my rocking out while driving to old age instead of some pitiful attempt to be cool! But as interesting as all this is, it doesn't account for the seizures.

So if it's not worrying about old age, what has triggered these electrical surges in The Brain? Honestly, I can only say, "Beats me!" And the beat goes

on
and
on
and
on
and
on

Welcome to my world or as Alice Cooper would say, "Welcome to My Nightmare."

Life is filled with ironies. Yesterday, while writing my post for Blogging Against Disablism Day, I had a seizure. It was the first of several that plagued me throughout the day. Like always, I did what I could between electrical overloads and the naps that follow them. But by the time the fifth seizure came along, I had had enough. My level of frustration reached the boiling point mostly because I have grading that needs to get done, and it's incredibly difficult to maintain focus on student essays when one's brain is performing the electric slide at regular intervals. Seizures make me craziest if they come when I've got something that I need to finish within a certain time frame, otherwise I deal with them quite well.

By mid-afternoon, I had given up on the notion of grading and returning papers. Feeling completely defeated, I settled into my nest on the couch to read a book that a student had loaned me. Two paragraphs into the text, seizure number six came along and blew the reading fuse. Patience be damned! Whatever it was that had triggered the seizures obviously hadn't gotten any better because my brain was still trying to get my attention.

I still don't know what upset The Brain yesterday, but whatever it was must not be resolved yet because this morning began with a double-header: a headache AND a seizure. You know, I wouldn't mind this crap so much if it made me look as cool as this chameleon!

Because the really, really good ones are so few and far between for me, I feel the need to celebrate the genuinely good days when I have them. Today has been one of those rarest of gems.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but perhaps that is what has made today so good; it was deliciously ordinary!

There was a time when I loved the symbolism associated with a circle. How romantic it seemed to me that such a simple and ordinary shape could convey such profound meaning as eternity or never ending love! But I have to admit that my honeymoon with the circle is definitely over.
Circles no longer hold only a positive connotation in my world. They have come, instead, to represent entrapment in the more uncomfortable and frustrating aspects of life.

Chiari is a circle to me. The illness has trapped me in all its roundness and no amount of effort on my part will ever break that circle so that I can escape. Every day I am encircled in the embrace of a condition that controls everything I do. The surprise attacks from a faulty cerebral circuit board that result in headaches and seizures remind me that I am part of "the endless round" of "despair and hope" that forms "the circle of life" ("Circle of Life" lyrics). If the attacks I've experienced over the past four days are any indication, I'd have to say that I am one heck of an important part of that circle!

Time is a circle to me. Like a dog chasing its tail round and round, I spend my days chasing time. And although life sometimes throws me a bone by giving me the illusion that I've caught up with the myriad tasks that need my attention, I am more often like the poor dog whose time is spent in the fruitless pursuit of an unattainable goal. Spring break has come to an end, and the TO DO list it began with circles my neck like a noose. Life was kind and threw me a couple of bones this time around, though, as I did manage to catch up with most of the laundry that had piled up and was able to cook a few things in large batches suitable for freezing for later use.

Work is a circle to me. The more work I do, the less I seem to accomplish because while I've been working on one task, another four have made their way onto my TO DO list. We've been exceptionally busy at the office for the past several weeks. When it gets this hectic, family and friends -- none of whom own and operate a small business -- tell us to "just hire some help." In theory, that's a really great idea; however, the costs associated with having employees outweigh any benefits we may derive from them at this point. Our business is successful and growing, but we are nowhere near rich and with me retiring ahead of schedule and losing nearly half of my income when I do, we can't "just hire some help." At least not yet. And so, the TO DO list grows daily, and the noose tightens.

Yes, the honeymoon is definitely over, and the romance has died! The circle and I must now find a way to get along with one another, to settle into a comfortable pattern that allows us to coexist peacefully. Eternity is, after all, a very long time!

Hey you misfiring mass of mighty matter,

What the hell is yanking your chain these days? You might find this difficult to believe, but the increased frequency of electrical overload that you have unleashed over the past week is not exactly my idea of fun!

Do you have any idea how not cool it is when you send out a surprise attack of the shorted switching stations while I'm trying to eat? I swear to you that I've really tried to find humor in the waves of nausea; I've looked for something pleasant about the painfully sharp tingles that run like fire ants up and down my right arm; I've tried to embrace the coughing sessions that tell me you have delivered the last jolt for the time being. But no matter what I do, turning your peak demand deliveries into a joyful experience is just not happening.

As much as I don't like your sudden bursts of energy during lunch, dealing with them when I ought to be on vacation in a chalet atop a mountain in Dreamland is even worse. Hello, your Electrical Eminence, has no one ever told you about the dangers we both suffer when sleep deprivation occurs? In addition to causing the fog that fills the void between my ears, a lack of sleep contributes to memory impairment, an inability to concentrate, a compromised immune system, slower reaction times, and slurred speech. Oh, and I forgot to mention that being too tired makes my eyes burn and water so much, day and night, that I develop oozy, crusty sores on the skin beneath the tear ducts. And the dark luggage that I carry around under my eyes may be full, but the bags aren't packed with comfy jammies for a restful vacation at the Sealy resort!

A couple of centuries ago, at a meeting of truly magnificent minds, a group of forward thinking men drafted a remarkable document. Among other things, this document laid out the ground rules of behavior between the governing and the governed. We call it the United States Constitution. Number 8 on the list of rules states that the governing body shall not inflict any cruel and unusual punishments on the governed. Since you, my Magnificent Monarch, are the engine that runs this incredible machine called my body, you must remember to control your desire to provide me with examples of the shock and awe of your power. I already know how awesome and powerful you are, trust me!

Can't we just get along?

When I was a kid, I had an adorable teddy bear hamster. His cage was on the desk across from my bed. Back in those days, I slept through earthquakes--literally--so Charley's frenzied nocturnal workouts on the running wheel never bothered me. By the time Iman was old enough to want a pet of her own and to be given the care of a hamster, the old saying that squeaky wheels get the oil had taken on a whole new meaning to me. It was then that I began to wish that I could experience the joy of running around on a wheel, joyfully going in circles and getting nowhere without a care in the world. Life with Chiari often leaves me feeling like a hamster on a wheel except that where the hamster enjoys the ride and doesn't care that there's no destination to reach at the end, I find running in circles quite frustrating and know that the more I run toward feeling better, the further away from that elusive goal I get.

I'm still not quite okay after the seizures and headaches of a few days ago. I stayed at home on Friday, thinking that I would get some things done around the house before beginning the grading fest looming on the horizon. Armed with a neatly organized To Do list, I tackled the chores: cleaning the cat boxes, dusting the ceiling fans, washing the curtains, scrubbing the bathroom fixtures. With each item that I crossed off the list, the more empowered and able to complete the next task I felt. It's been a while since I managed to maintain such focus without feeling like I needed to nap between jobs, so it was with a sense of exhiliration that I unloaded the dishwasher and made it ready for another load. And then, like some great cosmic joke with me as the punchline, something pulled the rug right out from underneath me!

With no warning ahead of time, my legs buckled, the kitchen rug slid across the floor, and I landed in a heap with a seizure well under way. Chiari patients sometimes have drop attacks during which muscle tone weakens suddenly and significantly enough that they drop things they are holding or fall if standing. I've had a few drop attacks, but they occur so rarely that I seldom think about them. I'm sure that what happened on Friday was a drop attack followed by, not precipitated by, a seizure. The whole event lasted 45 seconds or so, and I never lost consciousness. My dignity, on the other hand, didn't fare quite so well. :)

The seizure was intense enough that fighting off the need to sleep afterward was impossible, and I gave in to the need for a nap. For a few hours after the event, I felt weak, shaky, and a bit disoriented. I guess that my right leg must have been the one to bear the brunt of the drop attack because it still aches (it's currently 2:16 am on Sunday). I've had a couple of small electrical shortages, with headaches and stiffness in the neck thrown in for good measure, since the attack. Still, I haven't felt the need to bring out the big guns (Cafergot) yet, as I have an incredibly high tolerance for pain and the prescription strength Ibuprofen makes it bearable.

For now, my inner hamster has joined me on the pity pot and together, we're running like the wind on the Chiari wheel of life. Oh, how I wish I could be like Willie Nelson and sing about how good it is to be "on the road again."