Once my adventure in New York came to a close I went back home for the most important part of my fusion surgery... recovering.

While part of me did love being home again it served as a double-edged sword since my friends were all off at college and so it was just my parents, younger brother, and I. After the surgery, there were a ton of restrictions that I had but the biggest and most consequential was having to wear my C collar at all times except for when I laid down in bed to go to sleep. This wasn't an easy thing either as I could only do so when I had built a pillow-like wall around my head to prevent me from rolling over.

As I have previously mentioned before at this time I was also engaged and the girl I was engaged to had a ton of the same conditions as me which made talking about how I was doing much easier. However, once I left things between the two of us were well... off to put it mildly. She became moodier and I think became upset at my health. My health and the way I was able to get better though was because I followed what my Neuro Surgeon said to a T and if I had questions about something I knew I had to ask. On the other hand, she had been stuck up in New York for a few months at this point and I wasn't sure when she would be able to go back home. 

She did not follow the instructions after surgery like I did and her parents were not ones to correct her and force her to do so. Another issue was because of all the surgeries she had and the lack of taking care of herself she relied 100% on narcos to live. Since she had epilepsy and of course pain was a trigger so keeping her pain low was important. Because she had been on everything for so long there was only one narco left that she could take to function and its now pretty famous for how addictive and deadly it can be. 

Watching what it had done to her, as just a year earlier she wasn't even remotely close to being on a drug of this type, I was quick to taper off of any narco. At the time I was absolutely terrified of becoming an addict and honestly becoming like so many people I know with my conditions that rely on narcos to live day-to-day life. Looking back I do not know if it was the drugs she was on or just the situation but she began to fight me more and more over the dumbest things. Placing blame for things that were not in my control, like how her mom was treating her or acting, as if it was something I was behind. 

Within a week or so of me being home, Dr. B had been able to get her in for an ICP bolt and while she was in the hospital she started to have seizure issues again, likely due to the pain. Due to the seizures, her mom was quick to take away her phone which only exacerbated the issues between the two of us. Her mom would also text me independently things like asking for me to ignore my fiancee or how if I texted my fiancee she wasn't going to be allowed to text me back so just don't text her. It was really really odd stuff since her daughter would blow up my phone with texts but if I responded her mom would get mad. 

I have been part of and have seen relationships crumble and crumble quickly but I have to say this one does take the cake. Once her mom had inserted herself the way she had issues consistently seemed to arise. One upside was that she had a couple of friends coming to visit her and I thought seeing them would really do some good for her and help level her out. They came in a day or so before she was discharged from the hospital and when they arrived I suddenly did not seem to matter. Honestly, that would have been fine with me because of the fighting and her mom being involved except for the part where my birthday came and went and umm she did not reach out to me or talk to me from what I can remember. 

I am not a huge birthday person but this was my 21st birthday and honestly, we were well engaged so I figured I would hear something or that we would talk I don't know but silence was not something I would have imagined. That effectively killed our relationship right then and there as when she finally did reach out and I tried to talk to her and discuss how well I was a little upset not to hear anything from her she told me how she was just so busy with these friends and now she needs space/I was not good for her health. I think two days after my birthday we "officially" pulled the plug on our relationship but all throughout March she would randomly text or Snapchat me asking me why I left her, why I hated her, etc. etc. never once listening to me or engaging in a conversation long enough before she would disappear again. 

Now at the same time as all the turbulence is hitting my love life my medical life hit some bumps as well. I was quick to taper off the narcos for obvious reasons once I got home under doctors supervision however I ended up having some pretty significant pain a day or two after my last dose and it took Dr. B calling me and giving me a talking to that I would accept going back on a teeny tiny sized dose for a couple of days before taper once more. Hindsight this taper, going back on them, and taper again did lead to quite frankly the worst 21st birthday one could imagine because after I tapered off the second time a couple of days after my last dose... BOOM full-blown withdrawal right on my birthday. 

I have hinted at it earlier but my birthday was not the greatest with my fiancee blowing me off and the full-blown withdrawal. God bless my mother because it was her child's birthday and we were going to celebrate it! The feeling though was not mutual as I laid in bed with my collar on suffering from cold sweats. Looking back she was probably trying to just get me out of bed because she figured that the whole love life situation was contributing to this but in all honestly no I straight up felt like hell. 

Dinner time was by far the hardest because she wanted me to come downstairs and sit at the dinner table and celebrate while I was just kinda wanting to die. My mom, finally I feel gave up and my dad stuck his head in I think it clicked with him that more than anything I was just straight up not having a good time at the moment and it wasn't the love life or my bedroom it was the withdrawal that was getting me. I am not sure of this but I think he talked with my mom and more or less cut a deal with her that if I got up to blow out a candle on I think a cake pop but maybe a cupcake then I could go back to my room so that is exactly what I did all while truly reaching the point of fully hating I mean utterly despising narcotics.  

I am trying to remember if I was able to start PT as soon as I got home or if there was X amount of time I had to wait before starting but whatever it was as soon as I could I hit the PT ground running. PT was my escape and something I had been doing since the first neurosurgery and this time around it was the exact same thing. This was one of the few/best times for me to get to talk to different people for an hour or so and leave my poor parents alone! For the next few months my life, for the most part, revolved around PT and doing what I could to be in good shape.

At the 6th month mark I had the test run that needed to be run and got the good news... my bone growth over the fusion was great and I did not have to wear the c collar whenever I was out of bed. This was a huge huge improvement for me naturally but again there were caveats to this as well. The day-to-day life exceptions focused on any time I was in a car I needed to wear my neck brace. This included when driving which while it might sound dangerous and something you shouldn't do with mirrors and being smart it is a nonissue since I ended up losing the ability to turn my head as much as a normal person would be able to. 

This also unlocked a whole new level of PT that I continue up until this day. Due to the fusion, there are certain muscles, ligaments, and tendons that atrophied. The fusion prevents them from being able to function as they should and so some of the fallout from that does suck. For instance, the muscles etc. that you would focus on working to get rid of a double chin I cannot so when I gain weight it goes to my face bam double chin.... Having worn the brace for as long as I did also meant that when I moved around and didn't have it on it was very very different and took getting used to. Luckily by the time returning to A&M came around I was once again in great shape and able to return. 

After the first surgery, I thought it wouldn't be possible to crave school as much as I did but boy losing it another time around there was nothing more I wanted to do than go to school. While I was back and healthy there were a few things that were different this time around. This last surgery was pretty massive and a lot of what a "normal" college kid would do I just couldn't anymore.

My body would not be able to handle it and the pain/fatigue I would face made it not worth it. It was here I learned about Spoony Theory and how once my body ran out of spoons it was done there wasn't some reserve I could tap into. I had to plan and structure my life to the best I could. This was no easy task and took honestly years of trial and error to get right. 

Returning to school and being around people my age did numbers for my mental health. To keep my body on track healing I had to go home every couple of weeks for PT to correct issues that would arise or learn new more advanced PT exercises. Fun fact my jaw is now kinda sorta messed up due to the fusion limiting and I had to go in a few times for my jaw getting stuck. Now I can kinda sorta pop it and its good to go once the pain dies down but initially, it was a shit show. 

Returning most importantly let me hit the class hours mark to get my Aggie Ring which is a huge deal at Texas A&M and something that even my dad who went to the University of Texas was super proud of. Everything was going well after the fusion for the next three semesters until well it wasn't. 

Going into Spring 2019 I was looking at graduating soon. There were a couple course that I still needed to take and while I could have cramed them all into the Spring of 2019 and Fall of 2019 that would have been horrible for my health so my family knew my ETA on graduating was Spring 2020. A couple of months into Spring 2019 though I realized something was not right with my body.

I was not hungry at all ever.

I would watch the Food Network to try and spur hunger but whenever I ate most of the time I got super super sick and would throw it all up. Due to the fusion and all the surgeries my neurosurgeon got involved and had a battery of tests run but did not find a cause for the symptoms I was having. My General Practitioner well he figured it was mental and I had an eating disorder once the GI doc cleared me. Going over everything with my psychiatrist, who manages to this day all the freaking meds, I was not exactly thrilled because she seemed to be stumped as well until at the end she asked me if I had been using CBD oil. 

This was right before CBD oil really took off at least in Texas and I had started to take it after talking to my neurosurgeon to stay off of some of the meds I otherwise would have needed to take. Welllllll unknown to me research had just come out showing how CBD oil affects some people on epilepsy medication and in my case caused the medication to not metabolize in my system as expected. When she heard that she immediately went to schedule an EEG to see what my brain was doing. Any guesses?!?! I was having partial brain seizures all the time again! While my memory was compromised it was thought to have been due to not eating however turns out that it can also be a symptom of partial brain seizures. 

Luckily this was a pretty quick fix at least by my standards and took ~4-6 weeks to fix. Now during that time I managed to shed over 30 pounds and went from a little overweight to not looking so good. I still shake my head at how my body had to be one of the ones that has issues. That does fit my whole MO I guess so maybe I shouldn't be! 

Once again ya boy went back to school the following semester looking to knock out the classes he needed to. I had three I needed to take and so I broke it up into the English and Science Class the first semester and the Math course to close it all up. Now I hadn't touched math since my Freshman year of college so at this point it had been 6 going on 7 years. The first semester went by as expected but of course, could I sign up for the math class I needed to like a normal person?! NOPE!

See if you remember a few posts ago I had accidentally withdrawn from Texas A&M and had to reapply. Well unknown to me or my advisor at the time my math requirements had changed but according to A&M, I had still completed one of the two courses the result was of course I had to take Business Calculus II without ever taking Business Calculus I. I knew I would have to take this course going into the time slot I got to pick courses as did my advisor but even though we were told the system would be overruled in my situation automatically it didn't do that so the night my slot opened I freaked out and blew up the email of my advisor over this.

She was quick to respond (maybe she thought this was going to be an issue looking back) and quickly reached out to her friend in the Math Department because she in the Psychology Department could not override the rejected. By the morning I was in the class I needed to be in and everything was great because guess what hit in Spring 2020 shutting down schools across the world... Freakin COVID.

This professor was honestly one of the greatest people I have ever met. I had introduced myself to her at the beginning of the semester and explained all the twists and turns that had occurred because for Business Calc II it turned out that when you bypass Business Cal 1 there are a ton of equations and mathematical things you kinda need for the second course and I did not have them. Before COVID got the school "closed" I went to her office hours every afternoon Monday through Friday and then the two-hour study session she held on campus Sunday evenings. Thankfully she continued these when we moved online and it was after this move towards the end of the semester she commented on how impressed she was with me keeping up or at least trying to given the chaos at the time. More importantly for me though she told me that as long as I kept turning in homework online and trying on the tests I would get a B in the class when my grades were all over the place. Honestly best B I ever got!

Since this was the time that the whole world was melting down job opportunities well they died and shriveled up. Initially, I wanted to go to graduate school to get a Ph.D in Cognitive Neuroscience but those ideas fell by the wayside when I was tentatively offered a job with the Houston Astros. This was the year before COVID and so I was focused on that. As we all know COVID messed up the whole sports world including baseball resulting in me not having a job and nowhere exactly hiring. 

Moving back home in a lot of ways felt like I had just moved back home for the summer. The timing all lined up, there wasn't any sort of graduation celebration or walking across a stage it just kinda ended and then I went home except this time I had all my stuff with me. I think like most people the next few months were just odd as there wasn't anything to do but eventually, in July the place where my mom worked asked if I wanted to be a proctor for her coworker's kids so that those people could come into work. With nothing else to do, I took the job that I don't think paid me much at all but it at least gave me something to do. 

Around the same time, I started to volunteer for our family friend's run for Congress. We had known him since he was a beat cop and he was running to replace a retiring Member. I will say it loud and proud I hated campaign work and while it can be lucrative for people to get into managing and bundling campaign contributions from stupid rich donors it was not for me. That being said I quickly went from volunteer to a paid position on the campaign so when he won in November it was an amazing feeling to say the least. 

After the elections not only did that job essentially end but proctoring for my mom's coworkers was coming to an end as well because Texas was gearing up to offer in-person schooling. At this point, I really had no idea what I was going to do because places just were not hiring even though Texas was beginning to open up again. One of the people I worked with a ton on the campaign asked me about moving to Washington, DC. He had a job with the Congressman while I did not and would need to intern first to build up relationships on the hill to be able to secure a job. Initially, I didn't give it much thought because Texas was home and honestly the whole world was shut down why would I move to a new place where I would only know this guy and the Congressman in the middle of a pandemic? 

My health was an obvious issue as well because for the most part, I was moving far far away from my medical team and I was still going to PT a couple of times a week at this point. Due to my conditions, most PT places won't take me on as a client and when I talked with my PT about this he was not able to find anyone in the DC area who would. On the plus side of the move to DC is it would be super easy to get to New York if something with my fusion went wrong or if some other issue popped up. 

I went back and forth for about a week before I randomly one afternoon made up my mind while I was at my mom's work and announced it to her and her coworker at the same time that I was going to go to DC after all. It hit me that with everything that had gone on the last few years, all of the health battles and the relationship ending I needed a blank slate a way to turn the page and move forward. This was the best opportunity I saw in front of me and was a once-in-a-lifetime scenario... I had to take it.