Day 2

Today I am all smiles. After meeting up with an old friend last night, getting butterflies to see someone "new" and having a real conversation with someone who isn't him or my girlfriends made me feel light. I still haven't had the courage to go through my computer to delete all the pictures with him in it, and I'm sure when I do, I won't be smiling anymore. But I realized something very important; there's not some fatal flaw that made things end. Everyone has flaws, and I now have the time and energy to devote to myself to continue growing and becoming the person I want to become.

I get to have a relationship with the most important person to have one with again, me.

Like Mark Twain says "Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."

The end of something means the beginning of something better

Day 1:

I guess many would consider yesterday as day one, being it was the day he broke up with me. Yesterday was spent literally screaming, like you see in the movies when someone finds out their loved one died. And I guess that feeling equates a little to what happened to me. No, he's not dead. He's fine, living his life, glad to be rid of me. And I'm not sure which hurts more. If he had died, then he wouldn't have done anything to me right? Instead he ending things, broke my heart and made me question everything I've known for the past year. 

What do I mean? Well that's simple... he asked me not to question him, or our relationship. I would talk about our future, like living together, or traveling together. He said "Don't worry about that now, we have our whole lives ahead of us." Who knew a whole life lasted a year. And exactly a year. Yeah, he ended things on our one year anniversary. 

Before you start to call him any amount of choice words, realize its not his fault. I pushed him away, a crazy amount. I am not crazy, but I felt crazy. I felt out of control and I hate being out of control. I walked approximately 24 blocks in 42 degree weather, flip flops and a tank top. I tried to sleep in a park, to punish myself. When I finally got home, I got in my car and drove to his house, it was 4 in the morning. I walked in, took all of my stuff and left, screaming and crying. 

It was at this point he said "goodbye Sara". And I knew it was over. I drove out to the racetrack around 6 am, starving, shaking and about to fall asleep. I got back home, climbed into bed and fell asleep for no other reason than it was all my body could do. 

My phone rang 4 hours later. It was him. He said he was coming over. I thought that maybe all that love he told me to believe in, our future which we had planned out, would make he want to work with me to make things better. Instead he ended things. For good, forever. I begged him to stay. Like I was begging someone to give me a family member back from a hostage situation. But he left. 

As I cried and screamed and shook, it was all I could do. I asked questions like a little kid who was scared about a monster in their closet. And then, I slept again. 

This morning I woke up, hazy, in a cloud. Emotionally exhausted, barely able to drive. My thoughts miles and miles away. Feeling almost numb. When the dentist tells you all you'll feel is a little pressure, that what I'm feeling. Uncomfortable and under pressure. 

I am working, slowly, unable to focus, wanting the day to end but not actually end because that is when I have to leave. Where do I go? I don't want to go home, and be in the bed he used to sleep in, I want to be at my dad's, because he's gone, sleeping in his bed, in the house when I grew up, and got past all the pain I had before this. But I want to see my cats, and hug them. 

So after I leave work, where no one can ask me if I'm okay or not, because no one knows. I will go to the gym. I will use my muscles as well as I can. I will probably stop to cry. I will wish I could be held by people who's job it is not to hold me. Then I'll find somewhere I'm comfortable sleeping, and try to sleep. Again. And when I wake up, I will do this day over again. Come into work (not late this time), turn on my iphone to listen to something that will drown out everything around me and again, work on getting back to me. 

Deviated Septum Surgery

Yesterday I went in to have my deviated septum fixed. It has been causing me issues my whole life. The most recent and most sever being nasty headaches that would knock me on my ass. I'm hoping that this surgery will in fact fix the headaches, otherwise I guess it will onto a different path for me. Regardless, here is the process so far.

December 02, 2011-
Check into the Ear Nose and Throat Center of Utah, fill out the usual paperwork and then wait. First I had my consultation with my surgeon Dr. Steve Miller (he was great and very reassuring). Then the consultation with my anesthesiologist, the most AMAZING anesthesiologist I've ever had - Dr. Preston Richards from Mountain West Anesthesia.

If anyone knows my medical history, they know that I am afraid of anesthesia because I have woken up during surgery. Also, I have horrible veins, so getting an IV started can also be a very damaging experience. When I had my feeding tube in when I was 17, it took 5 nurses and an anesthesiologist to get the IV started and I almost walked out.

Dr. Richards got me into the operating room, gave me some nitrous to relax me, then numbed my hand before inserting the IV. I didn't feel anything. It was an incredible act of kindness from him because he listened to me and took into consideration my past traumas. He also had great bedside manner and didn't talk down to me at all. I felt empathy and mutual respect. More than I can say for most doctors I have come in contact with.

Back to surgery. Once I went under they made two small incisions on the inside of either nostril. Corrected the septum which was almost closing off my right nasal passageway and cleaned up the turbinates. Then I was done. A few stitches and two splints later and I was waking up. The nurse held my hand as I started to wake up, which is also very comforting.

I got home after only being at the surgery center for 3.5 hours. I was groggy but felt ok. I started to swell slightly but nothing bad. The bleeding is the most annoying part. It's not at all like a nose bleed, more like a runny nose. The gauze wrap helps though. Had an appetite by about 6 pm and as long as I stuck to food that was soft and didn't require me to open my mouth wide I was fine. Finally fell asleep around 2 am with the help of a sleeping pill.

Day two- December 3rd, 2011

Today is harder than yesterday. I got about 3 hours of sleep last night, between being uncomfortable propped up at a 30 degree angle and the feeling of suffocating when my entire mouth would dry out from not being able to breath through my nose. The gauze wrap wasn't comfortable but wasn't bad either. The only problem was you could feel when the gauze would collect blood, so there was a constant feeling of wanting to wipe my nose.

Today the swelling is twice as bad and has spread from just my nose out to my entire face. I don't have bad bruising, just dark circles under my eyes. I look more like I had a really late night than surgery. I can't open my mouth very much so I'm still eating soft food and drinking through straws. Not that I mind, I think everything tastes better through a straw regardless.

The pain in my nose isn't terrible, feels more uncomfortable like when you have a cold and you've been wiping your nose until it dries out and cracks. I can't feel the splints inside my nose at all. The bleeding out of both sides has stopped, now there is a little drainage, but nothing I didn't expect. My main complaint is a migraine (feel like I got hit in the face with a brick or something) but again, nothing I didn't expect. Some pain pills every four or five hours keeps everything comfortable.

Will write more tomorrow and hopefully it will be nothing but continued good news. This is a lot better and easier than I thought it would be!

A New Superhero?!

Today I found out some very interesting information...

Little did I, or the rest of the Thoughtlab team know that our boss Mike, was a superhero...

Intel Core Duo Processing and Your Memories

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While driving to work this morning, I listened to an interesting story about “The Bionic Brain”. First in a rat, now Intel is trying to have a brain implant on the consumer market by 2020.

What I’m talking about is a brain microchip- like the one in your phone or computer- that would help memory function.

This technology is crazy and it really makes me wonder about the consequences of what might happen when people start “upgrading” their brains in mass. Would it be illegal to be a professional athlete if you could better retain training regimens or strategy? What about how having more memory would affect getting a job or getting into college?

If this becomes a popular science and people start using it in their everyday life, doesn’t that make even more of a gap between those who already get ahead in life by being in a higher socio-economic class from those who are poor?

While the main focus of this science is to help aid in the recovery of traumatic brain injuries, and people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s, it really makes me consider what comes next.

I know I could personally benefit from having a chip that pulls power away from my Limbic system so that I can be more in control over my emotional response to things. But how much control would you really have over something like this? And in recent years hasn’t the world seen an increase in technologies failures that result in bigger and more devastating disasters (think nuclear plants in Japan)?

What happens in your brain if this chip fails? Or what happens if it starts recording the “wrong memories”. We’ve all had those weird, frightening, strange dreams that leave us in a state of confusion and haze the next morning (also known as a dream hangover) that sometimes stay with us for hours. I sure as hell don’t want those memories being recorded by a chip and replayed by some random trigger that I come across as I go through day to day life. I’ll speak from personal experience for a minute, I’ve had close calls on the race track, and some have had horrifying accidents. It already takes even the best driver at least a lap or two to get back to where they were before the incident. Think of how hard it would be if your brain chip remembered it. I see many “pro driver” types running around asking to be saved by Jewish God and Oprah Winifred.

Oh and for all those professional criminals out there, wouldn’t it suck if the police could use a mini-sd cable, plug it into your ear and have all the dirty details about the “supposed” disappearance of a large sum of money from said bank.

Think about it…

A dream

I have heard about this happening to other people as well, but when its a full moon, I start having very strange dreams. While mine are always vivid and clear, my "werewolf" dreams are just eerie.

Here's an example:

When her eyes opened she was looking down a street, Italy, she was sure, though nothing conventional told her she was right. Everything was a variation of gray, like twilight, some more blue, some more black, like looking out at the ocean after the sunsets and the color from the sky is gone. The street rolled downward, and each plateau in between was highlighted in a beautiful glow, light yellows like sun through clouds. At the bottom, the statue of David, surely larger than in reality, was dead center and easily seen although it must have been hundreds of yards away.  She turned to look down the other streets around her. Some ended at small cafes, others at landmarks she was sure were real, but were of course only important in her imagination. She couldn’t fathom how she was here, but she was happy, the deep happy, the kind that fills every cell in your body. She could feel it in her arms and her toes, in her lips and her words were almost sing songy, she couldn’t express how much pleasure she was in to be in this place.

Things slowly started to change, her group of friends wanted to walk to the statue of David but she was lost. Not in a scary way, just that her surroundings had changed around her, and to get her bearings she spun in the square they were standing in. There was a strange character appearing, a clown, a mime, a skeleton. An interesting internal struggle between a quintessential European street performer and something haunting her conscious. He was tall and skinny; you could see the outline of bones in his fingers. She told her friends to leave. She wasn’t afraid, she was curious. She knew the character her mind had created to challenge her wasn’t malicious, but he was uncomfortable. She looked at him as he looked at her and she lay down on the cobble stone street. He came towards her, he had a cool presence, but she wasn’t bothered by it. She told him to take her, and she wasn’t sure in what sense she meant it. He picked her up in his long spindly arms and carried her up stairs inside a small house that had now made itself the setting in which she found herself. The man asked her where she wanted to go, far away was her reply, and as they approached a small low ceiling bedroom, in foggy colors and soft fabrics, the skeletal appearance he had started to fade and she knew without making any realizations that he was a character indeed and this wasn’t what he really was. She remembered them kissing, seeing his eyes clearly above her and this time they were bright. She couldn’t place the familiarity they had but in a sense they were comforting. However as in real life, comfort seemed to bore her and she grew tired of being in the bedroom and leapt out the window.

She wasn’t falling; she wasn’t flying, just floating with great speed. She didn’t really know where she was going but appeared back in the same square she was in originally but this time it was a library. She knew she was in a college, specifically one that studied the human body. She also knew she was far from home in a place similar to Europe, but of course this was somewhere in her mind and couldn’t be pointed to on a map. She walked through the rows of books in the open air library, reveling in the beauty of it all and telling herself if she was in a place like this, she would succeed. That was her excuse; a change of scenery would replace all the shortcomings she has. As she continued to walk through the students she knew she was out of place and sure her wide eyes and open mouth made her look like a naïve child wandering through F A O Schwartz for the first time. She came to a group of students she knew were her age, sitting on old stone benches shaped like an outdoor amphitheater at a much smaller scale. She heard their voices and recognized them as American like she was. She didn’t remember the conversation, for what was being said wasn’t important. But as she was talking once again the scenery changed. Now she was in the same place however the book shelves were replaced by what looked like museum exhibit tables covered in strange pieces of jewelry covered in diamonds and gems. She was back with her friends as they touched each piece of metal and rolled it through their fingers, pocketing pieces that were particularly exquisite to each individuals taste. She questioned herself taking these pieces, but there was no guilt, there was no moral compass telling her she was doing the wrong thing, so she continued. In the low light of dusk, but a dream dusk, the small diamonds in one of the bronze bracelets, shaped like a snake but fluid and long, gleamed.

There was a lapse of time, of course unaccounted for, that passed and she was now weary of the sense of fear. But in an annoyed way, not in a guttural way that made he want to act. She felt sharp pain in her hand and as bear, dog, animal was biting her hand. It seemed to be biting her in play, but there was the smallest inkling that he meant to harm her. She pulled her hand away noting to herself that for the pressure and damage the bite was surely causing, she was in little pain, more of a discomfort. She freed her hand and pulled it away, noticing she was missing two fingers. There were small drops of blood but nothing that frightened her.  She remembered the pieces of metal and gems she had placed in her pockets and pulled them out. They seemed to distract the animal enough for her to walk away. 

Pictures!

I am adding a link that will let you see pictures from Waidhoven and Vienna!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10966&id=100000626237511&l=712ec1510f