A lot of people harbor resentment on Valentine’s Day. It’s hard when you’re single, it’s hard when your relationship is struggling, it’s hard when you miss someone in your life. Basically it’s only a good day for like 1 out of every 10 people. And the other 9 people absolutely hate that one happy asshole.

I’m sort of neutral on it. I love my husband with every fiber of my being. He is what keeps me relatively sane, keeps me grounded. He loves me even when he probably shouldn’t. He puts up with me when I can barely stand myself. And if I’m being honest, I really like having a day set aside to celebrate that. Yep, I’m that asshole.

But this year is a little different. You see, our (controversial) trip to New Orleans got sidelined by mother nature. I was only going to stay until Monday, so when Delta rebooked us for Sunday morning, I knew it just wouldn’t happen. With less than 24 hours in NOLA, I wouldn’t make it to any parades, I’d barely get 2 meals and that’s just a lot of pressure changes in a short period of time.

I’m bummed because I was looking forward to the trip, to seeing friends, to being in the city that I love, but it’s out of my hands (I’m actually sort of getting good at relinquishing control. Someone call my shrink and tell him that I don’t need him). My trip was scheduled to end Monday so I could be back at school, but Slappy doesn’t have to be back at work until next week. He chose this week of vacation so he could go to Mardi Gras, and at my insistence, he’s there now. He didn’t want to leave, but though he might not ever admit it, he needed some time away. He has picked up so much of my slack lately, I just wanted him to go have some fun.

So we did Valentine’s Day stuff last night. We went to dinner and a movie (Avatar, which I saw because I lost a bet, but surprisingly really enjoyed. I just can’t imagine how every many who’s ever seen it doesn’t feel totally ripped off for spending 3 hours in a chick flick) and just spent time being with each other. It was exactly what we needed. I can’t even begin to tell you how lovely it was.

And with all that said, I can see why as an in love asshole, you might not understand why I’m not all rainbows and unicorns today (besides the fact that really? have I ever been unicorns and rainbows about anything?) The real reason I struggle with celebrating Valentine’s day is because it has another memory tied to it, one less lovely than the dinners and dates and gifts that have been exchanged in my 6 Valentine’s with Slappy.

Four years ago today, I was diagnosed with Chiari Malformation. Four years ago, I started this battle with my brain.

I’m not a huge anniversary keeper most of the time, but this date is hard to forget. It’s hard not to remember that on Valentine’s Day 2006, I drove to my ophthalmologist’s office to get the results of my MRI. It’s hard not to remember the way the doctor sounded scared for me. The way he told me to call a neurologist as soon as I got out of his office. The phone call I made to Slappy who was 2000 miles away.

Even with the panic, the diagnosis wasn’t the end of the world. In fact, I felt relieved. We knew what was wrong. We knew the options. We new the next steps.

I thought we knew the fix.

And so the reason I feel conflicted today is that it’s been 4 years now, and even though we’ve jumped through every hoop we can find, we still don’t have the answers. After one brain surgery, 10 bajillion MRIs and 3 lumbar punctures, I still have pain that we can neither treat nor fix. The frustration is great and it’s gotten really difficult to keep my chin up and hope that by next year, things will be different. It just seems unlikely. Impossible.

And so this day is a double-edged sword, a wonderful victory and a deafening blow to my life.

Today I celebrate love, because imperfect though it may be, it is the thing I treasure most in my life. It is what keeps me going. And at the same time, I mourn the loss of normal, the onset of pain, the thing that stops me dead in my tracks. And I cling to hope that next year, I’ll be able to focus only on the good and that the 5th year from the day of diagnosis will be the first year of real relief.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Happy Holidays.

I’m going to be honest with you, as I lie flat on my back on my living room couch, in unfair amounts of pain, I’m having trouble being thankful.

It’s not that I don’t have much to be grateful for, because that’s not true. Even I’m not that self-involved. I am so blessed in so many areas of my life and for that I am endlessly thankful. I just feel like I’m only able to see these good things because of the myriad of bad. And I hate that. I want to be thankful for things, not in spite of others.

But I am thankful anyway.

I am thankful for my friends and most of my family. Because I’ve gotten to witness, even today, how crappy some people can be. And without the other good people in my life, I would not be able to get up in the morning.

I am thankful for my husband. Because he is the only thing keeping me from quitting everything in my life. Because he is the only sure thing I have right now.

I am thankful for my medical care. Because even with thousand dollar medical bills sitting on the table, and sore backs and spinal headaches from lumbar punctures, I know that without the doctors I have, I’d be nowhere (which, I know is actually NOT ANY DIFFERENT from here, but at least we’ve sort of ruled some things out now, right? RIGHT?) Because I know that others can’t get the medical care I can and they suffer for it.

I am thankful for the roof above my home, the couch under my back, the heat from my vents and the food I’ve over indulged in. Because I know others are without a home and the luxuries within it.

I am thankful for the internet. Because without you, I would be fighting so many battles alone, if I would even be fighting them at all. Because without many of you, I don’t know how if I could’ve come as far and survived as much as I have.

I don’t feel the way I have some past years. I don’t want to fall to my knees in thanksgiving for this year. I don’t feel like weeping with the gratitude over the things I have in my life or the great things that have happened. But I am clinging to the good for dear life. And I am trying to be thankful for the fact that in the midst of all the badness I can still find these blessings.

That in the midst of the darkest time in my life, I can still see that there are things worth living for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tonight I attended a wedding. I love me a good wedding, but friends, this wasn’t a good wedding. This was an amazing wedding.

I told the groom on what was the second to last dance, that this wedding, his wedding, reminded me of how much I love my husband (leave it to me to find a way to make his wedding about me, I know). But it’s true. Being at that wedding reminded me of our wedding, of our love. And it didn’t hurt that we got to dance to Baby Got Back either.

I know you know that my life has been a bitch lately. Read any of the last ten (thousand) blog posts and it’s there. See the look on my face at the end of the day and it’s there. Things are a mess. I am, categorically, a mess.

But this life that has become mine has not just changed me. And I tend to forget that. Slappy’s life is different too, and though he’d never say it, it’s not fair. He hasn’t had a home cooked meal in literally weeks. He does the laundry, he does more than his share of the cleaning, and he has to pick up my pieces and put me back together almost daily.

On Monday afternoon, I came home from school and cried for a solid 2 hours. Big gulping snot-filled sobs. I wanted to quit school. And he let me cry, he held me, he rubbed my back. And then when I asked, he was honest with me. He told me what he really thought about it and ultimately, he told me what I needed to hear. He helped me calm down and find the right path again. I’ve fallen off of that path eleventy billion times since then, but he’s been there to guide me back each time.

He is not without his bad days and those are hard for both of us. He is human and he is suffering from this too and sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that. (And sometimes it’s easy for him to forget to ask his wife if his brother can “swing by for a beer” at 8:30 on a Tuesday night when the house is a sty. I mean, theoretically, of course.) But we work through those hard days together.

I’m certain that there are days where he wishes he wasn’t doing his own laundry. And days when he wishes that his wife wasn’t lying flat on the couch, doped up on pills and miserable with pain. I’m sure this wasn’t the life he imagined when we began dating, when we got engaged, when we got married. But it is our life, and he is here with me.

I don’t know what next month, next week or even tomorrow will bring. I don’t know how many more tests or surgeries lie in the future. But I know that he’ll be there, with a sometimes obnoxiously even keeled and unpanicked response to guide me to where I need to be.

The bottom line is that, no matter what is going on, or how broken I am, I know that he’ll be there. And I know that even though this isn’t the life we set out to live, it is one that we will live together.

And ultimately, that’s all that matters.

and all I got was the swine flu.

p.s. Okay, fine, I got unconditional love too.
p.p.s. And a lot of student loans.
p.p.p.s. But mostly love.
p.p.p.p.s. So maybe we don’t know for sure that it’s swine flu. But Slappy has been MORE than exposed and he started this. And it’s not cute.

Hold me.

If you follow me on twitter, you probably have some idea where I’m going with some of this.

This morning I got up much earlier than I wanted to on my last day of vacation and drove out to the student health center.  The goal of the day was to check in with a physician to make sure that I wasn’t having a stroke.  And, of course, to get a referral to a neurologist.

I arrived 45 minutes early (seriously Los Angeles traffic, you and your unpredictability can suck it) and thankfully they let me in early.  The doctor (who was gorgeous, but not nearly as gorgeous as my live-in physician) asked a few questions and as soon as I said the word Chiari he was done.  I believe his exact words were, “whoa, we don’t treat that here.  How about a referral?”

So basically I drove 30 miles, one way, to get a referral.  Which really, is fine.  Except that when I called the neurology office to make an appointment, the referral hadn’t actually been sent.  So I have to go back tomorrow.  I really shouldn’t be surprised by this, and yet, I am.

I went home and lazed around the house for several hours.  When Slappy got home from his 33 straight hours in the NICU, I fed him (not literally.  I mean, I provided him with food.  He has hands.) and tucked him into bed (yes, we’re gag-ably cute.).  As I was leaving the room, I ran into the new desk chair mat.  You know, the thick plastic kind with all the spikes?  That kind.  Ran into it with my right foot.

And I fell to the floor.  Considering the pain, I expected that half my foot would be missing when I finally looked at my foot.  But to my surprise, there was nothing.  Hardly even any blood.  (I might have even uttered something to the effect of, for all that pain, I should get a war wound).  I went into the bathroom to apply a bandaid and realized that, holy crap, about 80% of one of my toenails was NO LONGER ATTACHED.

And then I died.

Seriously y’all.  That shit HURTS.  I couldn’t bear to pull the whole thing off (it looks like a loose tooth still barely attached) so I trimmed it and band-aided it.  In case you wondered, being married to a doctor who is grossed out by toenails is WORTHLESS.  It’s now bled through like 3 band-aids and throbs whenever it’s not elevated.  And it looks CUTE too.

But, on the upside, this totally answers the question of whether I should I wear flip flops or tennis shoes to my first day of grad school.  Because, I’d rather amputate my toe with a chainsaw, with no anesthesia, in my wedding dress, in front of a large audience, in a pool of acid, than put a shoe on.

Or, you know, something slightly less melodramatic.  Whatever.

The past two weeks have been Slappy and my first real glimpse of the lives of doctors and their wives.

The first week was, at least for me, pretty uneventful. Slappy was not on call and he had a 3 day weekend (4th of July). Basically he had a 9 to 5 job, er, maybe 7 to 3 and perhaps it was a little more involved than the typical 9 to 5. But still, not anything that would seem outlandish.

And then we began pager call. And I say we because pager call is not an individual event. Frankly, the sound it make is practically a zip code event.

While on pager call, Slappy does not actually go to the hospital, he just calls in and orders treatments or tests or things. Because he’s in the newborn nursery, any real emergency matters are handled by the NICU and for the most part, we are in jaundice hell.

His pager shrieks at decibels that make my brain quiver and some nights it goes off once (or that one night, not at all) and some times it goes off like 5 or 6 times. Never close together, always like an hour apart, that way you have time to go back to sleep. And every time he has to get up, read the information and at least call and give orders. At worse, call, get information, do some research, call back and give orders. It’s a circus.

But dude, all that aside, pager call is HOT. Because whenever he gets paged he has to call in and deal with the problem. And when he calls, he identifies himself. And everytime I hear him say “Hi, this is Dr. McBigbrain” I get weak in the knees.

I’m not sure why. I mean, I knew it would be his name, but dude, be still my heart. And I’m sure that the novelty of this will wear off in a few years when the pager sings its shrill song at 3 in the morning and all I want to do is sleep, but for now, well, be still my heart.

And the other night? Just as his pager went off, he put a dirty dish in the dishwasher. I swear I don’t think I was ever more in love with him than I was in that moment.

The quickest route to a woman’s heart is through the dishwasher, and apparently, being in a position of authority.

All I can say is, rawr.

I can’t hardly believe it’s been a year.

I mean, on the one hand, our wedding feels like 10 thousand years ago. Still the best day of my life, but the best day that happened eons ago. On the other hand, the idea of it having already been a full year since we exchanged vows and rings is mind boggling.

I have been running what I might say here through my mind for about a week. How can I best capture the ways I love you? How can I tell you (and the internets, because, let’s face it, you kind of married them a year ago too) how happy I am to know that we are just at the very beginning of an amazing life together?

And here’s what I came up with: You are the yin to my yang. (I’m nothing if not original.)

You are obsessive compulsive in a way that few people realize. That is, until they see our DVD collection, or look in your toolbox or your bookcase. You like order, whether it be alphabetical (DVDs), by right angles (the toolbox, garage and the moving van that was more tightly packed than 50 sardines in a thimble) or by date/age (your books, but also, those are alphabetical within the dating process. Or some other entirely complicated system I don’t understand), you love your organization.

And me? I like my chaos. I like my stuff in general areas where I can find them. I love piles and stacks. I love messes.

And over the nearly 5 years we have been together, your organization has made me crazy, just as my messes have done to you. But your organization has been useful and I’d like to think that maybe, just maybe, I’ve made you a little less crazy about order. If not, I’ll just keep moving your DVDs around when you aren’t home. Heh.

You are focused, but you are calm. You knew you wanted to be a doctor, and with that in mind, you set up a plan, took your time, and here you are, a doctor. You didn’t study every day, you didn’t lose yourself to the stress, you managed it. You formulated plans, you determined how many pages you’d read, questions you’d do and hours you’d spend on your studies. And you succeeded. You matched in the ONLY spot for child neurology at a hospital in Southern California, an accomplishment that I could not possibly be more proud of.

I, on the other hand, run wildly in circles near any objective of mine. I don’t plan very well, or sometimes I plan way TOO well, and yea, then there’s the crazy. I don’t calm down and see my goals, I just run full speed with a full head of steam.

You calm me when I need it and when I was sure I wouldn’t get accepted to any programs for this year, you reassured me and celebrated every acceptance.

You are a minimalist (well, aside from anything technology related). You weigh pros and cons before buying anything, you feel guilty as soon as you spend money and you are careful to make sure your purchases are justified. You pay close attention to your bank balance and your credit cards and you never, ever miss a payment or pay a bill late.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. I shop haphazardly. I go here and there, and I do contemplate my purchases and I do feel guilt when I overspend, but the guilt lasts about 10 nanoseconds and then it’s over. I think that the collection of 10 trillion post-its and 8 trillion sharpies would speak to my lack of sense er, minimalism.

(The very post-its and sharpies that were all over our house today spelling out Happy Anniversary in a rainbow of colors and designs. But, um, I still can’t find the other N and I’ve been looking for 7 hours. I’ll bet 10 dollars that you’ll walk in and find it within 20 seconds. A perfect reason why I need you in my life.

Update: I never found it. He came in the door with a bouquet of beautiful purple flowers with a card that just said “N”. Wily minx.)

Our spending neuroses keep us economically safe (okay, as safe as any family with almost 300k in student loans can be) and allow us to live comfortably, but also sanely. Or close, at least.

There are a multitude more examples of our fitting together that could fill up this whole blog.

You drink coffee, I drink tea.

You each cheeseburgers, I eat hamburgers.

You like mayo, I like mustard.

You like horror movies, I like chick flicks.

You could spend hours playing video games, I can spend hours reading (not that I don’t play video games, but, you know…)

I think it’s these differences that pull us together. We temper each other through good and bad, we find the balance that pulls us both from our extreme poles and into a normal level of care, concern or interest. Simply put, we make each other less crazy. Most of the time.

This year has not been a simple one. There have been trials, there have been fights, there have been big fights. There have been rough days and weeks and surely there will be more. There has been stress and trepidation, there have been victories and tears of joy. But there’s just no one I’d rather fight with, obsess with, calm down, boost up, compliment, constructively (heh) criticize, celebrate with and of course, love with every fiber of my being than you.

Happy Anniversary babe. 1 down, a lifetime to go.

So, about a month ago, Slappy and I were changing the sheets on our bed and Slappy put our cat, Karma, into a pillowcase. For whatever reason, I decided to videotape this endeavor.

When I watched this video last week after uploading it, I could not help but share this gem with the internets. Because, not only is it a video about our cat, but it is a true glimpse into our lives.

Things you should know before watching this:
a) I am a HORRIBLE photographer. And therefore, there’s like nothing to see. It’s really and audio glimpse into our lives.
b) I mumble. A lot. Turn your speakers up.
c) He did hit me. But not hard.
d) At the time, everything that came out of our dryer smelled…musty. Or sweaty. And frankly, a little like balls. Which is a horrible image, I know, but it did. And hence my comment and then Slappy’s signature song.
e) He’s not my mother.

Enjoy!

Cat in a pillowcase…and balls from Overflowing Brain on Vimeo.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will be married to a doctor.

That is, tomorrow, my husband will be “hooded”, will walk across the stand and will hence forth be Slappy, M.D.

Be impressed.

No seriously, be impressed.

I’m calling all visitors, anonymous or frequent commenters, I need you all to give the man a round of applause (and by round of applause I mean nice comment). These have been some of the most challenging years of both of our lives and this graduation is HUGE moment. Tomorrow, Slappy gets to see one of his dreams come to life, tomorrow his hard work is finally celebrated.

My very own doctor. The irony is never ending.

Congratulations honey. I love you and am SO proud of you.