I May Have Predicted My Own Future

So with my last two posts, I entered into a sort of premonition/deja vu territory that I never felt the need to venture into. 

I have waxed poetically that if I were indeed a Superhero, I would surely possess the power to make time stand still, to be able to freeze moments of my life, and hold on to them forever.   And I have contemplated the fairness of the world;  knowing that I stand very much on the upside of the fairness scale - that if the world were indeed fair, I would have to be knocked down a few pegs while others less fortunate than I would rise.

A few days after those two posts, I should have created yet another post, titled "Be Careful What You Wish For."    Because my life sort of took that Superhero turn, and I slid a little on the "its not fair" scale.

On Superbowl Sunday, I was making cookies with Dakotah and had some sort of blip where I froze in time - dropped the cookie sheet I was holding, stopped talking, stopped laughing - literally just *stopped.* A few seconds later, after Dakotah had repeatedly spoken to me,  asked me to pick up the cookies I had dropped, and then started getting mad at me for not acknowledging her, I started again.    Just like that, as if someone had snapped their fingers, stopped me in time, allowed the rest of the world to continue, and then snapped me back into it.

Superhero powers indeed.

Several doctors appointments later, several tests later, lots of what ifs, and could bes, and maybes, and let's hope nots, it appears that I may have had a stroke that night.  There is a 4mm section of dead brain tissue deep in my head that shows it.   And lots of unanswered questions about what happened and why.  Without the classic risks of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, I'm deemed relatively low risk for such an event. 

With a bit of a colorful medical history of things that have happened in the last ten years, but have resolved themselves, or have been of such little consequence that we did not dig any furher into it,  there are lots of possibilities of what may have caused this.

My reaction to all of this has intriqued me.   First, I am strangely curious about how nothing it all was.   Nothing in a sense that I couldn't have comprehended before this happened.  I have no recall of that 15 or 20 seconds;  it wasn't like I was asleep and felt myself wake up,  I was very conscious that I had just stopped.  I didn't hear anything, see anything, feel anything.  There was just....nothing. Such a very strange feeling.   I guess I would have expected dancing bunnies or a bright light or something.  Instead, just an eery feeling that, for a few brief seconds, life went on without me.

And then, sitting in my dr's office, as he turned his computer monitor toward me, pointed at the screen with a pen, and said, "you've had a stroke."  I wasn't scared or upset or anything.  I was just...vulnerable, I guess.

Honestly, and it makes even me laugh to say this, it was like the first time in my life I've ever realized my own mortality.   It was probably the first time in my entire life of lives that I truly realized that I am *not* actually a Superhero, lol - that I am human, and faulted, and defective, and will, someday, eventually die, just like every human before me, and after me. 

I mean, how could that have never occured to me before?

In the wake of fearing something really sinister,  there have been a few "not fair" moments racing around in my head.    My children rely on me so much - and its been my greatest blessing to know that however faulted I am, they have always been able to count on me.    It would be very rough on them to lose that. 

And yet,  I am fully aware that the true question is not "why me" but "why not me."   My life is no more precious or valuable than any other.   As much as I think about how devastated the world would be without me, lol, I know that it would go on....I even had a momentary glimpse of that in my very own kitchen.

As the drama of the events are beginning to ebb away now, and its looking like there is at least something fixable going on,  I am again humbled.    I am incredibly thankful that perhaps what happened that night was a warning sign to me, a signal that something does need to be fixed, and now, I am on the path to fixing it.

So, while I am currently rethinking my wish for superhero powers that would allow me to freeze time,  I also remember how empowered I am as a person, again fueled on by the two true superheroes in my life - knowing that this is a blip I will get through, and one that will once again remind me to smell those roses while I still can....

Oh, and don't think I'm 100% human just yet - I'm still very much contemplating a hot pink cape flowing behind me as I conquer all these little challenges ahead of me.   Really, how rockin' cool would that be?!

I only hesitate because of the look of sheer horror on my 17 year old daughter's face when I knit my own fingerless gloves, or took out my "Party Naked" sweatshirt that I won in a contest at a bar when I was not so much older than she is now...