THE UPWARD SPIRAL OF HOPE

In the months after moving home, trying to deal with the reality of living with constant pain, I felt as though my life was in a continual downward spiral. I struggled to do everything that I had so easily done prior to all the neurosurgery. Everything I tried to do now seemed to only make my pain so much worse.

I was painting during this time and as I was doing one painting I believe God showed me something. He helped me to see that there was a very real difference between being on this downward spiral and being in a vicious cycle (which was what I had also felt I was in at times). Unlike a cycle, a spiral could be reversed. This realisation led to my completing the artwork and writing about what I could now see, that in having HOPE I could reverse the downward spiral I felt I was on.

The Upward Spiral of Hope

When God gives us the Peace
To know that we can do all things through Him
For He will be our strength,
Dread and anxiety
Are replaced with eager anticipation and dreams

It is in having this hope
And looking forward to our tomorrows
That we are able to reverse
Any downward spiral of despair

Gabrielle Bryce

2001

LEARNING TO LIVE "IN THE NOW"

In the first months of my moving home I really struggled to cope with the continual pain I was in, and with having lost what had been my life. It was during this time that I wrote ‘Living in the Now’.

 

Living in the Now

Tomorrow is not here

And in some small way

We must get through today

And live as only we know how.

Walking ‘in the now’ takes all two feet

But with one foot in the past

It is impossible to complete

Steps

Real steps

Real steps towards

Real steps towards a hope-FULL future

Both feet in the present

Taking wee steps in the now

Is the only way to freedom

The only way to live

Right here. Right now

In this moment

We must rid ourselves of our past guilt-debts

And actively deal with and face our fears

So that we can truly appreciate

This moment that is here

© Gabrielle Bryce

17 October, 2000

The Aftermath of Six Lots of Neurosurgery in Eight Days

Having six lots of neurosurgery in eight days in 2000 left me with many noticeable after effects. Initially the problems were that my visual fields were crossing which was leaving my vision very blurred. I had lost my sense of balance and so wasn’t able to walk without help, I had no short term memory, and I was also left with ongoing headaches and severe continual back pain.

A smaller after effect of the surgery was that I lost a lot of my vocabulary. I would say a sentence that would make sense to the listener, but I would have to ask what certain words in it meant and whether it made sense.  I slept with a dictionary by my bed for many of the years that followed. I would think things and then have no idea what the words in those thoughts meant.

My parents stayed down in Wellington for three months after my surgery to help me convalesce.  I had been put into a rehabilitation unit but the state of it was less than ideal and Mum and Dad decided that they would stay down in Wellington and would take me to the rehabilitation unit each day rather than my having to stay there overnight.

On the 7^th of June my parents headed back home to Waiuku and I went back flatting. I had absolutely no memory of the surgery, and especially not of just how touch and go things had been for a while there, so to me it was no big deal and I wanted to put it behind me and get on with my life.

I moved back into my flat and, against all of my doctor’s wishes, enrolled for one paper at design school that would start in July. I thought that if I just went about doing what I had done before all the surgery, my life would just click back to what it had been before it.

I was regularly having onslaughts of extreme pain that was like nothing I had experienced before and was having to go into hospital and get pethadene injections. My emotions were swinging with the high doses of pethadene and I struggled to cope.

As predicted, I wasn’t up to the stress of the one paper I was doing at design school but I couldn’t understand why. In my mind nothing much had happened with the surgery and I felt very confused and frustrated that I couldn’t cope.

In the second week of August, after long discussions with Mum and Dad and with their strongly encouraging me to move home, I made the decision that I would go home until the end of the year. It was very clear in my mind that I was this was only going to be for a few months and that I would get back into my course in 2001.

On the weekend of the 12^th of August I had a birthday/ farewell party and got ready to move home, doing so on the 16 ^th.  Because, to me, this was only for the short term I wasn’t too worried about it.

In the months that followed moving home I struggled greatly to cope with the continual pain that I was in, and also to cope with how I was feeling emotionally.

I was sinking very low but, having come off antidepressants in 1999, I was in absolute denial that I was depressed. I was adamant that nobody was going to know how low I was feeling, I did my very best to try and hide it – even from myself.  Unfortunately in my attempts to cover up the lows, I over-compensated and was swinging quite high.

I continued struggling to cope with the pain as the months went on and after several consultations with different doctors I was enrolled in a month long, full time pain management program with The Auckland Regional Pain Service that would start mid-November.

The first and main thing about this program was accepting that you were going to have this pain for the rest of your life which was something that, at that point and time, neither I nor my family were prepared to accept.

The focus of the program was learning how to manage living with continual pain. A woman at the gym I went to in Wellington had said I shouldn’t work out if I had acute pain, and I didn’t know the difference between acute and chronic pain, and so I had stopped exercising. Working out each day was one of the main facets of the pain management program.

During the year after I moved home I really struggled to understand what was happening within my body. I felt great confusion as I had felt so led going to fashion design school in Wellington and now couldn’t sit down and sew for more than a few minutes without excruciating pain. I really grappled with what had happened to my life. I just didn’t think that all the surgery in 2000 was that big a deal and part of my struggle was coming to understand and accept that it was actually a huge deal and that my life had permanently changed and would never be the same again.

EIGHT DAYS, SIX LOTS OF NEUROSURGERY, ONE LIFE FOREVER CHANGED

The year 2000 started as any other year of my University years, with excitement and anticipation. However, on Sunday, March 5^th, about a week into it, I rang my parents and told them that they needed to come down to Wellington quickly as I was going to be having surgery the next day to replace the ventricular peritoneal shunt (that I had had in my brain draining fluid in my brain since my 1^st lot of neurosurgery in 1994) that was blocked.

On Monday things seemed to be ok and I was able to talk with Mum and Dad while I was in hospital. The neurosurgeon told them that they couldn’t replace the shunt until it blocked completely though, and I was discharged.

Thursday (March 10) I awoke with a horrendous headache and vision problems. My parents took me to hospital where I had a CT scan and x-rays which showed that the shunt was completely blocked. At 7pm I went in for surgery where they tried to remove the original shunt, but I had a bleed in the brain so they had to leave the shunt in and I was discharged the next day as things seemed to have settled down.

On getting back home I slept solidly until 5pm then woke with an explosive headache and vomiting and Mum and Dad rushed me back into hospital.

At 10pm they did a 2^nd operation and inserted a 2^nd shunt. I came out of that surgery with agonising head pain, an extremely high temperature, blurred vision and vomiting. A CT scan was done and then I was taken back into theatre for my 3^rd operation in 6 days where a new type of shunt was put in.

During this time my sister, who was holidaying in Zanzibar, began returning home and my brother came down from Waiuku. Several extended family members also came down from Auckland, things were not looking good.

At lunch time the next day terrible news came through – the new shunt’s catheter was too soft and had a kink in it. I had had my lunch and so they had to wait until 6pm to operate again.

The following day (Saturday) a CT showed that hydrocephalus (blocking of the ventricles) had returned and in the afternoon they operated again and put a shunt in the left hand side of the brain.  

I was extremely agitated after this surgery and had to have my hands tied down to the bed.

A CT scan in the evening showed that the new shunt wasn’t working so they did another operation (the 6^th) and put an external drain, a tube right through the top of my skull, to the outside. They kept measuring the angle against a level on the wall so it could gradually be adjusted to force the new shunt to work.

A few metaphors that Mum and Dad used to describe what was happening at the time were being put in front of a firing squad, and getting last minute reprieve, Walking along a cliff edge for a week, or being a boxer and just as you’re starting to get up, getting knocked down again.

When I woke from the last operation my Mum and Dad were terrified that I might be severely brain damaged from it all but when the nurse had asked if I knew who they were I had answered “Yeah, Patsy and Frank”, and they knew that I was very sick but still mentally able.

I was completely irrational for most of the Sunday, wide-eyed, talking nonsense about Mozambique (there was mass flooding over there at the time), and how I was taking people wheelchairs, along with lots of garbled nonsense about cooking.

The pastor of Mum and Dad’s church had come down on the Saturday and read me some scripture that I appeared to be listening to very intently. When he finished my comment to him though, was “You know you’re going to need a lot of salt with all that” - clearly I wasn’t all there!

So, six lots of neurosurgery in eight days then many weeks of recuperation to follow.

All the surgery had left me with many after effects and it took 3 ½ months of rehabilitation, with some taking many years, to recover from.

I was so fortunate to have survived all the brain trauma of those 8 days, but there was going to be a long hard road ahead.

__________________________________________________________________

Mum and Dad will be eternally grateful to Fong Au Young who gave them, and later me when I was discharged, a bed and cared for us wonderfully for many weeks. Along with two other home owners who let us live in their homes whilst I recuperated.

FINDING MYSELF

In late 1998 I plucked up the courage to apply for Fashion Design School in Wellington. When this became known amongst my peers in Palmerston North there were a few discouraging comments implying that I didn’t have the talent to get in. These comments really made me doubt my own ability, so when I applied and was accepted to the course I had a real sense of pride.

I was so excited at having got into the course and really felt that I had found myself. I thought that I was finally going to be someone, and make something of my life.  Due to the brain trauma in 2000, I don’t remember a huge amount from 1999 but I do remember that I loved it when people asked what I did and when I replied that I was studying Fashion Design, that I didn’t get put down as I had with my Bachelor of Arts.  In reality though, I had never taken art at school and had to trace the figurines to draw my designs onto for my portfolio that I submitted. The truth was I was going into totally unknown territory.

Everyone in my course had taken art at high school and it was second nature to them, but many had never sewn. I was the opposite and while I was comfortable sewing, I found the huge number of pages of drawing required quite overwhelming. 

In saying that, I absolutely loved my course, and equally loved the feeling that I actually had some artistic talent within me. During 1999 I started painting for the first time but couldn’t really paint what I saw particularly well at all. I always painted the only way I had ever done, painting what I perceived.

I was absolutely obsessed with fabric and the different textiles that were available, and nothing would thrill me more than to go into a fabric shop and walk around feeling the different fabrics.

Another thing that was a real boost to my confidence during that year was that I got approached twice by people within the university to do plus-size modelling. I was the biggest size that I had ever been and was just so amazed and thrilled that somebody could see beauty in me. 

I was asked to start modelling for art students to draw, and also did a shoot with a photography student. I found the shoot with her very amusing as the theme for the shoot was ‘melancholy‘ and yet I had never been happier in my life. She wanted me to model wearing clothing that I had made which also delighted me.

  

During 1999 I was taken to hospital several times with the same symptoms as in 1998.  I would have an extremely severe headache and blurred vision, but be conscious enough to get someone to take me into hospital and could give my full medical history. Then the next morning I would have no idea why I was there, would have a MRI scan of my brain that showed nothing abnormal (apart from my tumour) and would have absolutely no memory of the night before.

The shunt in my brain draining the cerebral fluid from my ventricles was blocking, causing the symptoms, and then clearing within several hours

1999 year was the year that I felt like I had finally found myself and what I was meant to be doing with my life. In hindsight I am so very glad that I didn’t know just how drastically that was all going to change in 2000.

Writing My Way Out of Depression - 2 'This Moment'

When I wrote during the period I first had depression I didn’t really think about what I was writing - I just let the words flow. This next piece of writing is one that I can’t quite fathom as it was in my writing it that God spoke to me. He did this at the time and has done many times over through this one piece of writing during these past 13 years.

                 This Moment

This life is but a flick of light

This moment is just passing

This day it will soon be replaced

So live it, that’s all I’m asking

This problem - it will soon be gone

This trial will soon end

Out of this valley will come a mountain top

Amidst the darkness, light I will send

Keep challenging, probing, questioning

Keep searching for what is right

In looking you will learn and grow

That life needn’t be a fight

For life’s puzzle will go along unsolved

Only I know how to solve it

So hand your trouble over to Me

And I will help you resolve it

The ‘whats’, the ‘whys’, the ‘how could you’s’

To all of these I hold the key

Slowly I will reveal the answers

So leave it up to Me

Place today into My hands

Trust Me in every way

When anxieties rise up in your heart

Just turn to Me and pray.

© Gabrielle Bryce

03-07-98

Writing My Way Out of Depression

During the period that I had depression I wrote a lot. In doing so I shared my journey with God and with my journal. This blog is the beginning of a series that will just be some of the pieces that I wrote at the time, occasionally with a bit of explanation as to the circumstances that led to my writing them.

One big thing that I struggled with greatly during this time was in knowing who I really was as an individual. I only knew who I was in the light of who my friends were but that didn’t seem to be enough. This experience of depression was when I first began to seek God to try and find out who He had actually created me to be.

Who am I when I stand alone? – JUNE 1998

Who am I when I stand alone?

Who am I when I’m on my own?

Am I what others perceive is me,

Or am I who God has planned me to be?

Do I have an identity

That is based on God or friends?

Who am I without them?

On this my future depends

Do I walk each day in the knowledge

That I’m an heir to the throne?

Do I have the humility

To know that I’m not this on my own?

Do I let God shine through my life

Because he lives in me?

Does it show through in my life

That I’ve been made pure and holy?

Do I claim my ground with confidence

Knowing the devil can’t touch me?

Do I really know my Saviour,

The one who has set me free?

Do I believe that I am the salt of the world

And that to other’s lives I can add flavour?

Do I know that I can’t earn God’s love,

That it isn’t a passing favour.

Do I understand that

I am a temple of the Holy Spirit?

And that to abuse my body

Is to abuse what is in it.

Am I aware of who I am in Christ

Of  who I can become,

Because of God’s precious sacrifice

His only begotten Son

I am but a weak little lamb

Someone wanting to just be

And by the grace of God

I am who I am

Because He has set me free.