So I’ve been told I need to update my blog; actually I’ve been told to update it regularly.

It’s been over two and a half years since my first surgery. Initially consensus among the doctors at Stanford was that recovery would take up to six months. But, two months after my first surgery I had to have a second brain surgery. After the second surgery, Stanford predicted a one year recovery time. At the one year mark we saw that little recovery had been made. Stanford then said "recovery usually takes two years." After a year and nine month and we still hadn’t seen as much recovery as we had hoped. My surgeon, Dr. Steinberg, then told me that he’d seen recovery happen in up to five years time. Though recovery has happened, (and much more than I think; I tend to forget that at one time I couldn’t even sit up in bed) I'm not expecting a full recovery any time soon. Altogether, I’ve had four major surgeries and three small ones, (not all brain surgery) all but two have left me with significant physical deficits. Though I can walk, practically I move better on wheels, and I can move my arm and my leg, but I don’t have a lot of coordination. As of right now my left hand and my left foot are paralyzed as well.

Often times people ask me how I’m doing physically. I say, “change is steady and slow but forward progress is being made!” Emotionally, however when someone asks me how I’m doing, I find it hard to encapsulate everything into a short answer. For me there is no short answer. How I'm doing emotionally is directly related to how I'm doing physically.
At first. my thought was that this would pass in a matter of months, I would make a full recovery and life would resume as normal. So, at the one year mark, when recovery hadn't happened as predicted. Reluctantly, (to say the least) I found myself truly contemplating a new life. Formerly, what I did or what I could do defined who I was. Physically I was confidant in my ability to handle most of the situations daily life presented to me. I went where I wanted, did what I wanted to... What I chose to do was a direct reflection of my abilities (obviously) and at whatever point I got stripped of these abilities, I was forced to redefined my whole person. For a while it seemed like everything around me served to remind me of what I couldn't do anymore, joggers, cyclists, cars.... My identity was so finely interwoven to what I could do that in as much as my body and abilities had been affected so too my sense of identity was affected as well. I felt like everything that was me had been completely torn down, and I was so damaged that any attempts at reconstructing my pre-surgery self were futile. But, that's not entirely true, I have made and am continuing to make progress. I know I'm speaking in the past tense about all this but it's not all behind me. I feel like the hardest part is behind me. But, redefining who I am and what I do is an ongoing thing. At present I'm struggling to manage the task of trying to reconstruct an image apart from my physicality, I have to discover new resources with which to build.
I mention all this because this is the space that I live in right now, in as much as it's about the very visceral physical side of things it's even more about the mental and emotional fallout that comes as a result of these surgeries.

As of right now I seem to fluctuate back and forth within the margin between feeling sad and being thankful. When I consider the reality of both what is today and what could have been. I’m often sad for what I have to live with. But thankful for what I still have. It’s a good thing for me to hear when doctors remind me that poking around on the brain stem (in my case twice) often time leads to more severe and comprehensive damage. That being said yes, I dodged a few bullets but I still have to deal with the ones that hit…. There in lies the fluctuation.
C.S. Lewis writes that you don’t really trust a rope till you’re hanging by it. If you see a thick rope coiled up on the ground it might be logical to say, that “that rope is definitely strong enough to hold me.” But it’s another thing altogether to say this while dangling over a cliff edge by the same rope. I used to throw around terms like “trust God” or “he will provide.” Two and half years ago I was thrown over the proverbial cliff edge. I could no longer just say the words I actually had to trust them….

One thing I used to think was that my faith had increased, but so had my doubt. After thinking about this concept a little bit more, I realized that this wasn’t very accurate, or even true. How could it be that my faith and my doubt were increasing at the same time? You would think one would most certainly cancel out the other. What I realized was that my faith wasn’t increasing with my doubt, in fact, I wouldn’t say my doubt was increasing at all, it was simply being exposed. My doubt wasn’t growing, I was being placed in situations where I had no other option but to trust, and at many times along the way, this became difficult. It’s like God was saying, “see you don’t really trust me like you say you do. You might doubt whether I care or understand, but that’s ok, I saw you’re doubt long before you did.” It’s almost as though my doubt was buried deep beneath a lot of Christian pretense and religiosity. But every time I encountered a new situation it was an opportunity for my doubt to be uncovered and my words of faith to be tested.

These past two years have involved me being in situations that show me how hard it is to trust what I can't see. And, this was completely understandable in that my life was turned upside down. But, I will say that my faith has become much more real. My reality, is that every time I encounter an issue, past experience tells me that I don't have logical reason to doubt that I'll be taken care of. I'd say one of the most profound and obvious ways is that needs of mine are often times met by friends and family, (especially my mom and dad), Without both I wouldn't be able to live here in Santa Cruz. whether it's a ride to the store, help around the house or trips to Stanford. My situation tests your friendship and it's reviled the love of my family, it has broadened and qualified my faith, it's teaching me to understand my self better and I'm learning to live well with what I have. My sense of loss is always beyond my words and sadness is firmly attached to it. But, my reality is that yes my life has been completely altered but I'm not left with with a hopeless want for good things in my future. Were I am now simply means that whatever I choose to peruse is truly good and void of trivial pretenses. all this is true, I am sad, I'm not sure that will ever completely go away but it's also true that like I said. My faith, my family and my friends have all sprung to life and all this makes dangling off the cliff much more bearable
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