bloodyrosemccoy | SO ANYWAY ONE TIME I HAD A STROKE

Fun, huh? But let's start at the start. Last summer, I got whomped pretty hard with a tsunami of hypomania.

... Hang on, hypomania doesn't generally lead to strokes, right?

Yeah, uh, so ... that's the thing.

My hypomanic episodes are generally harmless, but my brain goes nuts, lighting up like a goddamn Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas house. I have ALL THE FEELINGS AT ONCE, and generally outsource those feelings to fiction--either my own or other people's. I wrote a good chunk of the OGYAFE* because, given the Fire Hose of Ideas I have during these events, I felt like I had SOLVED IT, and I probably watched the entirety of Stranger Things around four times. Also had friends over to watch the Lord of the Rings movies, because those movies definitely have some FEELINGS in 'em.

HOWEVER.

Another symptom of hypomania is, ah, hypersexuality. And what are you gonna do if you're asexual and feeling hypersexual and uninhibited in your spending? Obviously you buy yourself a fancy vibrator!

So, uh, anyway, I bought myself a fancy vibrator.

And it's a great vibrator! Literally blew my mind one night!

No, really. One night as I used it I got myself a hell of a head rush, among, uh, other effects. Dang, wow! Did ... did my head just explode? I got up to go to the bathroom and was feeling a bit peculiar, kinda dizzy, and as I was washing my hands I thought, "Yeah, I'm just gonna lie down here for a second."

Turns out in the summertime, with all its marble and tile and the air conditioner, my bathroom floor is fucking COLD.

Anyway, I wound up lying there, trying to stand up and failing several times--a couple of which made me throw up--and it occurred to me that my left arm had disappeared. Which I know, from years living with a neurosurgeon, is generally considered a Bad Sign.

THE THOUGHT I SHOULD HAVE HAD AT THAT POINT: OH, SHIT
THE THOUGHT I ACTUALLY LANDED ON: Well, this is inconvenient.

So, after several hours, I managed to climb the sink and get to my feet, after which I cleaned up the barf, gave myself a shower with the working hand (look, I had barf in my hair and I was COLD, don't judge me!), put on my pajamas, and stumbled back to bed because dammit, I was tired, too.

When my alarm went off, I texted a bunch of gibberish to my boss** about taking a sick day and fell back asleep until Mom came down to check on me.

MOM: Hey, don't you work today?
ME: Can oo get Dad? I shink I had a shtroke.
MOM: What.
ME: Can't move my leff han. Might need a n'ro tesht.
MOM: WHAT.

Turns out emergency room doctors are very carefully neutral when you admit you used a vibrator and you think it blew your mind, by the way.

I've been getting teased mercilessly about going back to bed instead of, y'know, mentioning to someone that my brain was full of blood, but dangit, I knew what I was doing! One of my main memories in the ICU is having nurses haul me upright to test something or other and me saying, "I'm gonna lie back down now." Like, this happened multiple times. Having a lightly exploded head makes you sleepy, turns out.

Anyway, nothing about having a basal ganglia bleed ever seemed urgent or scary to me; it was all mostly annoyingly inconvenient and embarrassing. But one of the effects seemed to be an exacerbation of my autism presentation. I could feel my flat affect, and talking with any sort of cadence was a chore. I wound up sounding like Lorenzo Music doing Garfield's voice a lot. And I sounded and looked disengaged. I mean, the hypomania hadn't gone away; I was still feeling feelings and writing fiction in my head,*** but outwardly I seemed like a dissociated husk. It took a lot of work to engage myself with people again.

It also took some work to reel in my left arm. For a while it felt like I was controlling it remotely, and that it was floating a little out of sync with the rest of me. Fun! Anyway, thank goodness for neuroplasticity, because I have regained most of my functioning! And if I ever klutz out or forget something now, I can say, "Gimme a break! I had a STROKE!"

*Yes, I'm still working on the Obligatory Giant Young Adult Fantasy Epic. I think I actually have the skill to write it at this point, so I'm still going!

**Dear software developers, your swipe keyboards are NOT stroke-friendly, by the way.

***And a special shoutout to the one character whom I terrorized throughout the healing process. Sorry, dude, but those scenes were dynamite. I'll make it up to you.