I have been writing for quite some time now but have come to realize that I have not explained the meaning of the title of my blog. A Broken Brain Story came from hours of sitting alone and wondering if my brain would resolve and I would miraculously be cured of all things that had happened. Having hemiplegic migraines are not something that are permanently damaging which is a blessing, however, your spirit and body are in this confused turmoil fighting against each other trying to win a battle and in the end, everyone is knocked out.

I become inspired to write this blog after reading an amazing book on our honeymoon. The book, titled Stir, My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Back, about a woman, Jessica Fetchor who had an aneurysm burst in her brain and her journey recovering. I was convinced people thought I was crazy because I starting reading it on the plane going to Miami where our port was and I started to cry. Her writing and experiences brought me back to places I thought that I had left and never had to be back again. It was haunting. I decided to revisit it again on our second week and couldn’t put it down. I read the entire book in two days. There were times when I laughed aloud and made Sidney read the few paragraphs because it was as if she wrote my life the past few months. Reading her story and knowing that she came out alive and thriving was inspiring. In some way, it gave me comfort in knowing things are going to be okay because she went through a situation multitudes worse than I.

I had been writing to work things out in my mind. At first, it was a voice-to-text feature on my computer as my floppy fish hand was not working but slowly would move to typing. It was comforting that I could write everything out and walk away, kind of like a thought dumping. It was also comforting to know that I still had the ability to communicate coherently through writing as my speech had bit the dust for lack of a better term. All things were not lost. There was still hope. Going over my journal entries, there was a common word that I came across. Broken. I feel broken. My life is broken. My body is broken. This word was found continuously in almost every entry since May.

The common theme when discussing my diagnosis was that no one knew when my symptoms would eradicate. Days, weeks, months. No one knew. As much physically as I felt defeated, mentally I was even more so. The kicker, it all started with my brain. My brain was the center of this mess. It was the control center of what was happening to my body and something inside was broken. When medical professionals talked about my hemiplegia or to me, they talked about it as a third person. “The migraine”, or “The brain”, as if I was sharing the room with someone else. Often times I still can’t comprehend or grasp that this has happened to me but then I have to get myself upstairs and it kicks in really fast. Note to self and anyone out there, never buy a two story house when one side of your body doesn’t work. You have to resort to going up the stairs on your butt like a toddler, it’s a humbling experience, to say the least. We are now looking to get a chairlift. This will be exciting, however, it does clash just a bit with our decor.

So that is why it is A Broken Brain Story. It is a part of me but does not define who I am. I live with it every day and will for the rest of the life. It will probably always be broken but it is only one of my stories.