So, here I am. Labor Day, 1986. All the doctors had to say as they released me was "Have a nice life!" and I was gone after an eight-day stay. I'm fresh out of the hospital and on my way back home over a 100 miles away. No hospital where I lived could do the kind of surgery I needed, but it's done now. It's over. I have a new, expensive haircut -- a VERY expensive haircut! LOL That's brain surgery for 'ya. LOL LOL
I thought it was odd that I didn't need a post-op visit, either locally or at the hospital, but who am I? I didn't even need to refill the prescription the hospital gave me. I couldn't fill it in the first place. I found out after the fact that my state couldn't fill their prescriptions -- you'd think the hospital would have known that. Thank God I didn't need it, but that's not the point! Keep that in mind if you ever have to travel for medical reasons.
So now I'm home and after some of my hair grows back, I begin preparations for yet another life altering event. I'm getting married! My fiancé and I had been inseparable since December '78 and that was good enough for me, but I guess brain surgery had an affect on somebody else, too. My fiancé wanted to make us legal. We decided to tie the knot on December 31, 1986. Suffice it to say, 1986 was quite the year for me! It felt like all the bad stuff was behind me now. We were married and we moved into a new home. I had short hair for the very first time in my life, but hubby didn't seem to mind and neither did our new puppy. Everything about my life seemed fresh and new and I was as happy as I had ever been. I took what the doctors said to me to heart and I was having a nice life!
Nearly seven and a half years went by without a hitch until one cold morning in February, 1994. I was involved in a car accident. No, I wasn't driving! Nothing too serious, but the ER doctors kept me on a blessed back board all day until they were done with all the X-rays known to man and they were satisfied that nothing on the inside needed their attention. I broke the pinky on my right hand, sprained my left ankle and discovered that street salt does not a facial scrub make! LOL LOL Yeah, it had snowed the night before and no one could decide if it was a good thing it had snowed (and I got 'salted') or if no snow on the street would have caused less damage. I think the final tally marked the snow and salt the clear winner. In any event, I scraped up my face pretty good, but nothing that needed repairs. I just needed to heal up a bit and I could continue on where I left off. Boy were they wrong about that.
Months went by and I was having a hard time reading. I had my eyes checked only to discover that my perfect 20/20 vision wasn't so 'perfect' anymore. What I didn't know at the time was that this was the beginning of the end. To this day, I can't get a doctor to document my failing eyesight under the Fibromyalgia 'umbrella', but just like any other muscle in your body, your eyes work with muscles, too, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. Just remember the problems with my eyes when I bring this up later on. The point here is that they blamed everything on the fact that I was 'getting old'. At 37, I didn't think so, but my Mom and Dad both wore glasses, so who was I to argue? I bought my first pair of glasses and resigned myself to the fact that I was on my way to becoming 'over the hill'. It was a hard pill to swallow, but at least I had my health, right? WRONG!
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