Those of you who have heard my story know that every year around this time, I talk a lot about my journey with a brain tumour diagnosis and removal. The tumour was a surprise find and close to taking my life. It was surgically removed two weeks later, once I’d weaned off the blood thinners I was taking for inherited thrombophilia. Then, I started a second journey of finding ways to engage with life with a hole in my forehead as a result of the neurosurgeon not being able to replace part of my skull without crockpotting my brain due to massive swelling.
Most years I am just grateful to be alive. I celebrate the day, even though I relive the journey leading up to it because the outcome could have been very different. Not everyone survives meningioma removal, and of those who do, not everyone regains the ability to communicate or even comprehend. I had work to do, especially around finding words and being able to write without leaving gaps for those missing words. It took years to get back to the point where I had been … interrupted.
This year, for some reason, I struggled in the lead-up to the anniversary of the diagnosis. I don’t know if it is because I recently met someone who also had an intense medical journey the same week of the same year, and so we have been talking about our stories. Perhaps it is because I am writing regularly again, and I realise how much more I could have lost and what the ramifications of that would have been (no words in anthologies, no Brush Tales, no blog, no writing courses learning more about my chosen craft). Maybe it is because visiting a psychologist regularly has made me more aware of my underlying feelings. Whatever the reason, I have had to write a lot more this week to get the words that wanted to overwhelm me out of my head.
I also needed to know the anniversary date. I have remembered it all as a moment in time rather than an actual date, but now, eight years on, it suddenly really mattered to me to find out on what date in February it happened. I worked it out and thought that I was ready for this year.
I was wrong.
THE NUMBERS GAME
(16/2/24 – Natalie Bock)
The date caught me unawares.
I thought it was another.
Because
even though I remember everything
about the day itself,
the date never registered.
My mind back then worked in terms and weeks –
it was Wednesday, Term 1, Week 3.
This year, though,
eight stolen years later,
I desperately needed to know
the actual date.
I googled, and I counted,
and I concluded that
the missing number was
seventeen.
I woke
on the sixteenth day
of the second month,
feeling prepared for tomorrow –
ready to face the onslaught of memories,
to relive the trauma,
to cope with FaceBook showing me
previous years’ status updates
that mark this time.
Except …
I was caught out
when my feed showed me
last year’s words
today.
Surprise!
I checked again,
googling calendars from 2016,
confirming I was right,
and realising last year’s update was written
on the wrong date
because,
until now,
I had only guessed at the number,
not factoring in leap years
or changing term commencement dates.
To me, all that mattered was
I walked out of work on a Tuesday afternoon,
and the next day,
my life changed.
I went back to work, eventually –
many, many months later.
But I could never go back
to exactly who I had been
when I headed home the day before
Wednesday, the 17th of February, 2016.
A Glorious Mess 