The reason I wrote this post initially was because I wanted to have some way of providing an account of what I have been through, something which would describe me in a simple and succinct manner when I am limited (basically by 140 letters on Twitter). They are fine when you don’t need to write a long explanation, and they force you to be short and to the point, but under the circumstances I find this limiting. In fact, whereas the rest of this, my brother’s, blog is in Spanish I found I needed to translate this account in particular into English because I will probably need it to briefly tell all the people I am bumping into on Twitter, who I am; about me, what happened to me. It isn’t a complete autobiography, I don’t go into the details of my past life, but I needed to describe all that has to do with my “process” as I call it. The illness and everything that happened. Suffice it to say that I am a bit of a jack-of-all-trades; bilingual, born and brought up in England. Of Spanish parents. I was born in Woking (where the aliens landed in H.G.Wells’ “War of the Worlds”) and then lived in Englefield Green, on the corner of Surrey and the last three years just down the road in Old Windsor which belongs to Berkshire, just next to Runnymede where King John signed the Magna Carta. When I was just about to turn eighteen I came to Spain, in the year 1986. I got married in 1989 to a Spanish man and have worked in jobs related to the world of tourism. Finally my husband and I have been running a Restaurant in Colindres for the last fifteen years, and it was when I was on my way to work one morning that everything started. The story I am interested in telling and the point of both this resumé and of my “book”.
Although I have already written about myself on this blog, I have only written small bits and pieces, I now wanted to get everything clearly across; now that my thought processes are clearer and, I myself, know what I didn’t really know before. It is funny because you can see how my mind has evolved if you follow my posts from the very beginning where I say “hello” just over a year ago. I had, just recently, as I like to say, “come back”, from wherever it was that I may have been.
I find that all that I want to say and to get across I cannot put on paper or through the keyboard on my computer because my thought processes are going at quite another speed than that of my hands.
I have written a book about this “process” I have been through (as I like to call it) where I declare that I have needed help so as to be able to get everything straight. The book, incidentally, is written page for page in English and in Spanish by me. I am going to tell what happened to me here, on this post, as clearly and succinctly as possible in order to get everything straight, so as to tell my story shortly and clearly.
The 6th October 2012 I had a brain hemorrhage. I was taken to Valdecilla Hospital and when the doctors had practically given up on me I had another hemorrhage. The hemorrhages were being caused by an AVM. I also had many infections in my lungs and my brain. Finally I was operated on and I had the AVM removed from my brain. An AVM is a ball of veins /arteries with no point- a malformation. I then spent several months in a coma. The operation which was carried out on me was by “trephining” which is when the surgeon physically opens the skull and operates directly on the lesion. There are less aggressive ways of carrying out the operation (ways which don’t involve cutting and sawing) but in my case they couldn’t use the method pushing a catheter through the vein from elsewhere in the body because I had a hematoma in my brain, and radiotherapy was discarded as an option because I was in danger of undergoing yet another hemorrhage before the operation. The radiotherapy sessions would take a much longer time, it would take several sessions and a long time. Even so I had two hemorrhages and then the operation. I think three comas in all. I have said this before but I am in awe of the expertise of the surgeons and amazed that I can, at present, be here writing this. Well, I am amazed that I can still think basically, let alone read, write and talk. ( in two languages,- I think I am perfectly entitled to show off. I never have done so before but it is one of the many things in which I have changed). I say that the initial hemorrhage was on the 6th October 2012. There my memory disappears, it returns in July of 2013.
As I say the initial hemorrhage was on the 6th October 2012, and there (well, in fact even before then, for I do not remember any of the things that happened, not the headaches or anything…) my memory simply fizzles out, it disappears. It returns in July 2013. I have a question for which I long an answer and which I know I will never get an answer to. WHERE WAS MY MIND? During all of those months. Not during the approximately four months I was in the comas, but during the rest. I know my body was there, I have proof, but where was my mind? It is just as well I have proof; my family telling me, photographs, and, what is even stranger for me to see, recordings…
I remember things that happened before that date. I remember all my childhood. I remember two languages, mine (I am bilingual) – I remember English and Spanish. I still remember some of the French I studied at school, a few words of the Italian I also studied. I even remember some of the German words I used to hear at the campsite I worked at in Noja. Yet I do not remember that time which goes from the 6th of October 2012 to July 2013.
Yolanda Canales