Who would of thunk I'd lose... A Little Piece of Our (My) Brain

When Lucy was in 7th grade at Western Center Academy, I formed a writers' group for students to learn basic writing skills, and have the opportunity to see how a critique group is run.

The group consisted of twenty-five, 7th and 8th graders. Our goal was to write a collection of stories that would be offered on Amazon as a fundraiser for the school's PTA. The year long club was a huge success. Many of the students learned to finish a short story from beginning to end, while others learned to avoid grammar errors that they never been taught by their English teachers, i.e. dialogue isn't strewn together in one long paragraph between characters in a story, and each speaker starts a new paragraph.

We finally put the book on Amazon as a Kindle book, and it was even the #1 best seller for Children's Short Story Collection for one day. 

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Piece-Our-Brain-ebook/

What I wouldn't figure is that our title "A Little Piece of Our Brain" would have a little more meaning for me.

During the previous six months before the school year started and six months after the school year ended, I had a constant nasal drip. I would continually return to the doctor who would say that I've got a sinus infection. I would argue and joke that I thought is was "brain juice" but no one took me seriously.

I was right.

The medical term is called cerebral-Spinal fluid leak (CSF leak). I was diagnosed in July and operated on in October 2012. What makes it so ironic is that the hole in the dura of my brain was approx two-and-a-half cm wide,  which was just enough room for "a little piece of my brain" to fall through.

When my young, brilliant, handsome Dr. Garg (I kid you not, that's his name) shoved his endoscopic camera up my nose to inspect my brain leak, I actually saw my own brain bulging into my sinus cavity--okay, I'm exaggerating a little since it was only the size of a pinky fingernail.Cool, huh. How many people can actually say they saw their own grey matter? I can!

Now, I have all kinds of  excuses for doing the crazy stuff I do because I literally lost my mind. What's your excuse?

It's easy to joke around, but the surgery did take seven hours and I had six doctors all looking out for me. My doctor and the anesthesiologist were going to put in a stint in my spinal column to inject dye to show more details of the tear in my dura, but there wasn't enough fluid in my spine to even attempt this procedure so they operated without the dye.

All the doctors at Kaiser Anaheim did an awesome job at putting this Humpty Dumpty together again, and to them I say, "Many, many thanks!"