[ getting back to life ]

I went to the ENT doc today to follow up on the results of my MRI. Good news is I do not have a tumor. The hearing loss is, indeed, attributable to damage to the inner ear itself. This was the good news.

The less than good news deals with the “bright spots” on the front of my brain. The doc mentioned this could be the cause of some memory loss, and is likely resultant from long-term hypertension. Google has scared the bejesus out of me by matching the terms “frontal lobe” and “bright spots” with frightening terms like “early onset dementia” and OMFG “multiple sclerosis”. Good bye fear of tumors, hello fear of MS. (It certainly does not help that I’m right in the middle of reading The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan.)

I hope I’m being dramatic. I hope the bright spots are nothing to worry about. I hope there was just some fuzz on the imaging equipment. I hope … my doctor was lying?

I’m having trouble putting this into words suitable for the entire family, so I’ll just come out with it: Holy fucking shit what is my fucking problem? I have known about my hypertension for three years and I have done nothing. Every few months I decide to have a few bowls of oatmeal for breakfast and pat myself on the back, then it’s right back to the same old routine of omelets, sausage and waffles smothered in syrup with six cups of coffee and Taco Bell for lunch.

I suppose I just wasn’t scared of the words “high blood pressure” or “increased risk of sudden cardiac death”. Those were just … maybes, risks, scare tactics … things that could happen, but probably won’t.

And then there’s today. This is not a maybe. This is not what might happen. This has happened. Physical evidence of scarring to the brain, along with an already quantifiable loss of short-term memory.

I don’t even know what else to say. Serious - fucking - wake-up call.