So a while back, having finished up the final season of The Umbrella Academy* and the first season of 3 Body Problem**, I had canceled our Netflix subscription while we watched some other stuff on Britbox, Starz, and elsewhere. But then the Jamie Foxx special What Had Happened Was … came along, and I wanted to see it, so I signed back up. The special is being billed (sort of) as standup comedy, but that’s not really what it is. It’s more or less Jamie Foxx speaking about a very serious incident and cracking the occasional joke, kind of not unlike somebody else we know.
Tag: subarachnoid hemorrhages
Five Years Out: Three Weeks in November
Yes, I know, this is Election Day here in the U.S., but—speaking of traumatic events!—it’s also the five-year anniversary of The Event. Well, more or less; the actual anniversary is on November 7th, i.e., this coming Thursday. But we don’t post on Thursdays around here, we post on Tuesdays*, and so you’re getting the anniversary post a couple of days early.
This being an anniversary that both begins and ends with a five, it seems like a good occasion to once again reproduce the entire six-part series on The Event for those readers who may not have seen it before, as well as for those readers who have been following the election and would like to take their minds off it by reading about somebody who was having an even more stressful day than they are. Probably. Anyway, read on for the tale of what to do, what not to do, and what might happen when your brain suddenly starts acting all weird!
* This is of course so that if I can’t come up with anything else to post about, I can always do a Teaser Tuesday.
Continue reading “Five Years Out: Three Weeks in November”Happy Annieversary! Or Something!
So it was four years ago to the day that The Event occurred, in which there were various ways I could’ve died but I somehow managed not to hit any of them. Members of the brain aneurysm group I’m in often refer to this as their “Annieversary” or, occasionally, their “Second Birthday”; I’m going with “Annieversary” since it didn’t involve cake or funny hats. (It did involve noisemakers, though, in the form of machines that whirred and beeped and went “ping”.)
Readers who have been around a while may remember my six-part series about this, which I posted a few months after the fact, and of course I’ve linked back to the first installment any number of times. Since it so happens that this year my weekly posting day falls on my “Annieversary”, I thought I would repost the whole spectacle in its entirety. So, be advised: This will be a long post, because a lot of stuff happened over the course of that three weeks. Oh, and, so as not to stress anyone out about it, here’s a little spoiler for you: I didn’t die. Not even once.
Continue reading “Happy Annieversary! Or Something!”Your Brain’s In Jeopardy, Baby (Oooh)
I don’t watch Jeopardy! anymore, because, among other reasons, we don’t have cable anymore; but I used to watch it, and once even attended a taping (in the latter part of the Alex Trebek days) with my parents and my aunt.
Continue reading “Your Brain’s In Jeopardy, Baby (Oooh)”
Cause & Effect
March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and we’ve started it off with another celebrity death due to a ruptured cerebral aneurysm ― arguably even higher profile than Grant Imahara’s sudden death in 2020, at least for those who never watched Battlebots or Mythbusters. I’m referring of course to Tom Sizemore, who was hospitalized on February 18th, 2023, and apparently never regained consciousness before passing away on March 3rd, 2023.
Continue reading “Cause & Effect”An Annie-Versary
So as of the time of this post, it was exactly one year ago—9:13am on 11/7/2019—that I woke up on the floor in the living room.
Continue reading “An Annie-Versary”Aneurysms In the News
The astute reader will not be at all surprised to learn that I am a longtime fan of both BattleBots* and Mythbusters**, and so the unexpected death of former BattleBots competitor and Mythbusters host Grant Imahara did not escape my notice.
A Six-Month Semi-Versary
So this week (Thursday, specifically) marks six months since The Event, when an undetected 3mm aneurysm at the base of my brain ruptured on November 7, 2019, causing a serious subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and putting me in the hospital for about two weeks, most of that time in ICU. After being released, I spent the next couple of months recovering at home and returned to work on January 2, 2020. Also in January, my wife and I started going to our local dance studio again, and I resumed exercising and most of my other normal activities, at least until California shut down due to the coronavirus about six weeks ago.
A Public Service Announcement
So I was talking this week with my parents, who remember the polio epidemics of the 40s and 50s. Each summer the virus would flare up in different cities and regions. When there were outbreaks in a particular locality, movie theaters and bowling alleys would shut down, and swimming pools and beaches would be closed. It seems to me the present situation is not unlike a polio outbreak where the air is a swimming pool, the entire country is a movie theater.
The Event, Part 6
11/26/2019 and Beyond: Aftermath
Although I had been discharged, that wasn’t the end of the recovery process. As previously noted, I had to stay on the nimodipine for another three weeks, which meant waking up every four hours to take two gigantic pills. I’ve never had so many alarms set on my phone in my life. (The tone I chose for these alarms was the “Barking Dog” sound, because that was the least jolting one I could find. After 20 years of having dogs around, you get used to all the barking.) Annoyingly, my “hip flask” refused to adhere to the same schedule as my medication, so in between the times when my phone was barking at me, I had to get up at odd hours to empty that thing out. As a result I didn’t get more than two or three consecutive hours of sleep for nearly a month, and I doubt my wife did either.
Viscosity 