Ouch

I am nearing the anniversary date of my brain surgery on April 23. It has been a year since this knobby head of mine was bald, incision scars making me look like some type of Frankensteinie and recovering from some pretty intense emotions.

There is some small amount of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome involved with my head. My skull seems to be hyper-sensitive, and I still wince when I see models of brains (or those strange, detailed illustrations in doctor's medical offices of brain anatomy.) At any time, at any given day, my head begins to itch. I can feel just below the skin surface my buttons anchoring my leads, my wires and connectors leading to my battery packs, and the tension between the wires and packs. I HATE my scars and my itchy, fragile head. I am just vain enough to not want people to see my chest scars, so I have had to get rid of a fair amount of my clothing. It seems like cleavage enhancers are also scar framers, and I know people are looking at them.

I work at a school where kids openly point and laugh or ask somewhat rudely what those icky things are on my chest. Ever the teacher, I figure its a teachable moment so I explain how there are more polite ways of asking about another person. Not that curiousity is wrong, I tell them, just that there are ways to ask without making the other person feel stigmatized.

Ah but I LOVE these neurotransmitters, I tell myself. I meditate/pray about making them my friends and every time the DBS staff turns them off to perform a "tuneup" I dislike the way my left side tremors and twitches, flopping like a dying fish. They allowed me to recover nearly a normal life. Who cares if the wires running into my chest look like tendons no one else has? Who cares if the chest scars are thick and asymmetrical? Who cares if the plastic anchoring buttons itch and feel weird when I rub them? At least I can work!

For the first time today, I filed an injury claim for an event that happened with one of my more mentally ill students. He would not clean up his toys and leave my room to go back to the classroom, so I turned to make a phone call to ask for support, leaving my back to him. As I did so, he threw a hard plastic piece of a roof he was attempting to assemble and did not want to put away.

The throw hit my head right over one of my wires and it hurt. I turned to him and said loudly and firmly, "I am mad at you. That hurt me and I dont like being hurt."
He looked at me, then said "shut up," and threw another piece at my face. That one didnt hurt so much. The combination of the pain of the toy hitting me, and my ultra-sensitive, ultra-protective head made me cry.

Will I make it in to work tomorrow? I feel, at my age, I have "paid my dues" and it would be nice to have an assignment that didn't have sick kids freaking out and hurling toys at me. Why am I being tested? Why would a colleague with ANY empathy whatsoever give me this assignment; this unsupportive principal, weird, tense climate, small, hot, stuffy room??

I have no choice. I work, for more than a paycheck, and those things are important to me. God give me the courage to sit with this, forgive the situation, learn from it, and move on.