Excuse Me, I Tweeted

realized that 140 characters is all she can handle with brain damage, and wanted to share the joy of neurosurgery with the world. less than 5 seconds ago

That is what I tweeted. I don't want to clog up Fundraising Nerd with a bunch of neurosurgery blather, but if you want to follow my personal saga, it is available to you at http://twitter.com/amandajarman

This is no commentary on twitter users, but I doubt I would have started using my account without having been brain damaged. LOL. Srsly tho, im ntrig'd by tech.

Fundraising Nerd readers, I can't make any promises for the next six weeks. My brain surgery is Monday, and my head is going to hurt really really badly for a while. Then I will still have trouble with text. But, I will type at you as soon as I can, I promise!

The Lazy Researcher

So, one of the side effects of my brain pain is that research is actually really freaking hard for me right now. But I also need to find a free legal form to create a will. (I am totally not planning to die, but I don't want to be one of those people who dies without having made provisions for my cat and favorite charities.)

What to do, what to do?

Online chat with a librarian, 24 hours a day!

Thanks Oregon libraries. You rock.

Aprilw, you are awesome. Thank you for finding me what I need, available to me as a member of the Multnomah County Library.

Local readers, if ya wanna make a will: legal forms.

I Can't Believe It Either

I am going to have brain surgery.

Neurosurgeons believe that I have a cavernous malformation in my brain, which is a little cluster of abnormal blood vessels. It looks like a mulberry! That is what hemorrhaged about three weeks ago. It is likely to bleed again at some point in my life if it is not removed, and could potentially cause death [update: probably not death] or other really bad stuff, like seizures [update: or degenerative loss of my left field of vision, i.e. no more pleasurable reading]. So, the best thing to do is to remove it.

Between the hemorrhage and the impending brain surgery, it is like my brain is sprained, so I have to avoid stress and exertion, aka thinking hard. (Sort of funny -- I have been completely obsessed with "hemorrhage" since the the terror attacks of 2001 when "hemorrhagic fever" was bandied about the media so often.)

So, I am going to keep posting stuff about fundraising and nerdy stuff here, but I'm not going to beat myself up any more when I don't do it as often as I'd like.

Thanks to everyone who has been so amazingly supportive -- emotionally, spiritually, giving me rides and food, etc. I feel so blessed to have such amazing friends and colleagues.

Hemorrhage!

OMG -- I had a brain hemorrhage.

I am going to be okay. However, I am taking a bit of a break to take some painkillers, watch movies, flip through magazines and see whether I need brain surgery.

I'll be back to posting soon enough.

xoxo.