Yesterday, Tom the shunt decided to start malfunctioning. This pushes up the grumpiness scale massively as I get vertigo symptoms, my hearing does a u turn, the old incontinence issue reappears and life just gets that bit harder. I wish sometimes I could just go back to bed and wake up when it’s all over but that is obviously not very practical in the school holidays. Actually I really don’t enjoy going to bed as I can’t lie down so let’s change that to magically morph into a new person.  That sounds far more exciting.

After a good self talking to I was up and ready for the off. Talk about channeling ones issues into something positive, chores done and picnic packed. It was all going so well this art of distraction until the realisation that I have absolutely no idea what I have packed in the picnic, have I remembered everything for the beach, I have no idea if we even have towels and the dpd Man is running late with my delivery all of which has flicked the control freak switch and sent me into meltdown. Again one can’t visibly be seen to be having such a meltdown over trivial issues as it would look rather odd so the old brave face comes out again.

I am literally like a swan. Admit ally not particularly graceful but on the surface things are running a lot smoother than below. There is a lot of paddling going on to stay afloat which is frankly flipping hardwork.

The effort was all worth it as we had a super day. We met lots of nice interesting people, the weather and food was fAb and a impromptu chat with a good friend who literally had me belly laughing.

This scenario is an example of exactly why having a brain injury is so hard. Trivial things seem huge and fun days out are a challenge. One has to dig very deep to make the effort to try and it does get me thinking of how long I can continue to keep digging. At the moment it is getting harder to do that digging and I would like to say I hope I still can but in reality I have to as losing us not an option ( in the words of Chiari Warriors!).