I’ve half-written so many posts in the last few weeks, but then I get distracted before I am able to finish my thought and the magic is over.

Right now, there are thousands of thoughts running through my head. I wish it were an appropriate hour to go to bed so I could get some quiet and collect my thoughts (it’s 1 in the afternoon). I also want to tear my hair out and pace until there’s a hole in the carpet. So, I’m here writing this post instead. I just had an appointment with the doctor who performed surgery on my facial nerve in April of 2016, just to check in regarding the progress being made by my nerves. I’ve seen him a handful of times since my surgery, but I’m feeling like I shouldn’t need to still be following up with him. Shouldn’t this part be over?

He wasn’t in any way negative about how slowly my progress is going, but I do think that he (and I) figured we would see more significant improvement by now. Ultimately, my face issue WILL get resolved, I just hadn’t considered anything other than a full recovery as the outcome. I guess because of the degree of my nerve damage, there’s a chance that only SOME of the axons (nerve fibers) regenerate, but not enough to make my face move again. There’s also the chance that nothing else will progress, but that would make even less sense than a complete, seamless recovery.

This problem of partial regeneration, or even no further regeneration, is fixable. But it’s more surgery and it won’t give me my old face back. I feel like I’ve hit a wall with the amount of hope and optimism I can muster for a cause that’s showing no signs of improvement, but thinking about surgery instead of waiting out the healing process seems too extreme.

When I’m home again in December, I will get another EMG (nerve test), and that will give me more information as far as the amount and degree of regeneration that’s going on, then I can plan from there. I’m just really fucking tired, and I want off this emotional rollercoaster now, please.

I guess, based the tone of these last few posts, you could say I’m officially no longer riding that post-near-death-experience high. That being said, there is a lot of really great stuff happening in my life that just doesn’t inspire their own blog posts. The other day, I successfully wore wedges on grass ALL day and didn’t eat shit once, so that was pretty cool. But I’m not sure what more I could write about that one. Sorry if these posts are kind of a bummer, but this IS my life and sometimes the cost of authenticity is a lack of rainbows and butterflies.