Bad Brain, Bad! (or, "Subarachnoid hemorrhages are overrated")
Written:
I almost died in September, 2024.
This isn't an exaggeration. According to my doctors, and what I've been able glean from research papers I found on the Interwebs, I only had a five percent chance to live through the events I'm about to speak of.
The fact that I made it through without significant loss of cognitive function is even more remarkable, I'm told.
I've sat with these odds ever since I got out of the hospital, trying to make sense of the usual questions one might have. "Why did this happen?" "Why did I live?" "What does this mean?"
I don't have any Big Answers. I just wanted to write about the experience.
Chapter One: My Head Hurts
I was chilling out on my bed one afternoon, watching and laughing along with a Twitch streamer, when I had to get up and go pee. I went into the bathroom, did the expected thing, then turned to leave.
As I turned, I got hit with one of the most intense pains I've ever felt. It struck me right at the base of the skull and took all the wind right out of me. The room spun and flickered, my knees shook, and I would have called out for help if I'd been able to breathe.
I think it took a full minute of standing there for me to get myself together enough to move, and maybe another full minute or two to get out of the bathroom and back onto my bed.
I sat, letting the pain "settle," and slowly tried to turn my head from side to side. I was breathing again, slowly, but things were definitely Not OK.
"I've herniated a disk," thought I.
See, I'm blessed with a bad back, a creaky neck, and more joint issues than I can count. There pretty much isn't a day that goes by where something doesn't hurt. My neck had been complaining about my propping up my head in weird positions to read or watch things, so I figured it had had enough of that and decided to go totally tits up.
I'd heard descriptions of herniated disks, and the feeling I had sure seemed to fit.
This is the point where you'd call a doctor if you aren't poor and don't suffer from extreme anxiety. If, like me, you are poor and do suffer from extreme anxiety, this is the point where you consult Dr. Internet to see what can be done.
After half an hour or so, the pain had receded a bit, and I had my answer: take an anti-inflammatory, alternate ice and heat, rest.
I spent the next twenty-four hours or so taking naproxen sodium every eight hours, and trying to find a position to sit and/or lay down which wouldn't further alarm my neck.
The headache was intense, but tolerable. It reminded me of these stress headaches I'd had when I was in my teens and early twenties, only dialed up a bit higher on the pain scale.
"Oh, well, I've live," thought I.
The next twenty-four hours are kind of lost to me. I have only bits and pieces. Broken images without context. I'm told this is because my brain was shutting down, and getting on with the business of dying.
Chapter Two: Slideshow
I'm lying on the floor. I say: "My head." I hear someone ask me if I want them to call an ambulance. I think I say: "Yes."
I'm lying on the floor. Someone is shouting my name. My pants feel weird.
I'm lying on the floor. There's a sharp pain in my nose, like something made of plastic is being forced into it. My nose burns.
I'm floating. I realize that I'm on a stretcher, being carried down a set of stairs. The shaking makes my head hurt. I think I scream.
I'm lying down, but it doesn't feel right. There's a thumping sound. Later, I'll be told this was a helicopter ride. I'm disappointed that I don't remember really anything about it.
I'm lying down, but my legs are up. People are all up in my areas, rubbing things. I ask what they're doing to me. "You pooped yourself," they say. I never see those pants again. I lost the keychain I've had for thirty years.
I'm lying down in a bed and people are shouting at me. I think I see my Dad at the foot of the bed. People are asking me if I want him to make decisions. They hold a piece of paper in front of me and give me a pen. There are several people and they're all cheering and chanting for me to sign. They clap and celebrate when I do. I hope they'll let me sleep, soon. I'm very tired.
I'm lying down in a bed. My head hurts. The light is a dim yellow. "Do you know your name?" "What month is it?" "Do you know where you are?" I don't remember if I answer them.
I'm lying down in a bed. A doctor is talking to me. I don't remember what they say. Other doctors are standing around them. They're smiling. I wish they'd let me sleep. My head still hurts.
Chapter Three: Aneurysm? I Hardly Know Him!
About one in ten thousand people are walking around right now with an aneurysm in their brain. There are a few risk factors which increase one's chances of developing one, but it really just comes down to a roll of the dice. Some of the best neurosurgeons in the world told me this, personally.
"Not every bad thing that happens to us is our fault," one said to my face, when I asked which of my many mistakes led to my aneurysm.
Now, aneurysms are funny things. They can hang around for years, entire lives, and never cause any real problems. Sometimes, though, they rupture and you get what's called a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
That's the bad thing that happened to me.
I was bleeding into my brain for two days.
As I wrote way up at the top of this tale, the survival odds of this sort of thing are quite low. People only really survive such a bleed because they get prompt medical intervention. Two days is not "prompt," by any reasonable definition of the word.
The location, type, and severity of the bleed are also factors, of course. And in my case, they all sucked. I basically rolled really, really poorly on the Random Aneurysm Chart.
But, I also apparently rolled several natural twenties in a row on my saving throws. Throughout the whole recovery (two weeks in the ICU), I was told that I was passing all the tests with flying colors. Several teams of neurologists and neurosurgeons came to visit, including some medical students, and all they could say is I was an astounding success.
My headache lasted eight solid days. I remember laying there at one point on day five, seriously thinking that I would have preferred dying.
Chapter Four: The Meaning of Life
When I got out of the hospital, one of my friends asked if my experience gave me any new perspectives. They asked whether my outlook on things had changed. They asked if I had come away from the brink of death with any answers about life.
"Don't bleed into your brain for two days," I said.
It was the best I could think to say.
The truth of it is, I was kind of apathetic toward the whole thing. I still am, if I'm being honest.
I've had profoundly mystical experiences in the past. I've seen and done and experienced things which I consider to be pretty strong evidence that the materialists have got the universe wrong. I don't know what the Big Answers are to the Big Questions in metaphysics, but I know enough to know that no one else knows the answers either.
This aneurysm? It just doesn't rate. The whole thing, the whole experience, it was just unremarkable.
I had an illness. It almost killed me. I recovered.
I have a few lingering problems. I lost some of my vision in my right eye, for instance. But other than that, I'm mostly over it.
It was a thing that happened, and now it's done.
I've explained this to friends and family members who've asked, and my words always seem to land like a wet fart. They want more. And since they know I'm basically a bearded wizard who does magical rituals, reads Tarot cards, and practices astrology, they expect me to make a bigger deal out of it.
"Shit happens, I got through it," is not the profound revelation they signed up for.
The most profound thing I took from the experience were those doctor's words: "Not every bad thing which happens to us is our fault."
If the universe meant for this experience to give me some other words of wisdom, it should have put them in an email.