sad

"How is Karl?" My friend asks, picking up her beer.

"Have you read my blog?" I wonder. I haven't seen her in a year; she's been in England.

"I read the first few entries then I stopped. It made me sad."

"That's the point," I say, laughing.

I understand why she stopped reading though. We met when our fiancés were deployed together. She has since gotten a divorce. Her ex-husband had some issues to start with and being stop-lossed for another deployment didn't help his winning personality. He actually did have a winning personality - he was funny and charming. He also lied, cheated, and drank too much. She's had enough sad in her life without reading about Karl's brain deteriorating.

And deteriorating it is! It makes me laugh to make grand proclamations about how bad things are in sing-song advertising voices. Sometimes it makes Karl laugh too.... sometimes it makes him angry that I am so flippant about his brain.

I am irreverent. I do not show respect for mTBI (mild traumatic brain injury). I tease it. I laugh about it. Sometimes Karl does too.

"Brain!" he'll groan as he forgets what he's saying in the middle of a sentence.

"My brain is leaking out my ears," he'll answer when I incredulously ask what the hell is going on with him after he does something incredibly baffling.

Sometimes we laugh about TBI. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes it is less funny than frustrating or even heart-breaking.

Sometimes it is sad. So there are months when I don't feel like writing a sad story. I don't want to detail how angry I was when Karl ate my turkey. I don't want to explain that I bought two packages of lunch meat, one specifically for me, and discussed it with Karl. I don't want to hear that normal people do that and then feel like I need to explain that it was the last straw on an otherwise "bad brain day."

It is hard to write about Karl too because while it is sad, it isn't pitiable. It just is. Brain injuries, like amputations or disfiguring scars, don't define us. They need to be treated with a healthy dose of irreverence and flippancy.

Recently, someone wrote me an email asking what my husband was taking for pain, suggesting that his odd behavior and forgetfulness were the result of opiates. It still makes me laugh, weeks later, to think of this. For the record, Karl doesn't use opiates. In fact, the only medication he uses is medical marijuana, which has been shown to promote new growth in the brain.

I'm a big fan of medical marijuana, which allows Karl to operate in public. He routinely tells people that on the days he seems normal, he's using marijuana. On the days he seems really discombobulated, he's forgotten his medicine. There's a huge difference. He is more focused, more able to focus, when on marijuana. I say "on" because he doesn't smoke it. He takes a specific dose of medicine made with marijuana. While some research shows that marijuana slows or reverses neurodegeneration, it is very controversial. What I know is: it works for Karl.

"I wonder how much worse I'd be if I wasn't using marijuana," Karl said today, when I laughed because he planted the squash and sunflowers together. The plants were in their own rows, but they looked similar, so he ignored their placement. He cannot trust his brain, which he forgets.... because his brain says "trust me."

It is sad that Karl can't trust himself and that his brain is leaking out his ears. It is also funny... if you allow it to be.