Besides the obvious, which is SURVIVING, lots of things happened to me after my brain aneurysm that I have found to be odd, awful and actually not-the-worst-thing-in-the-world to have happened to me. Mostly the recovery was and is sucky …but not always. And it was not always what you would guess.

In thinking about it like David Letterman, or these days in Buzzfeed or Mashable style, I believe these are the top 10 most surprising, sometimes awful, and sometimes not-so-awful, but quirky things that came after my brain explosion:

10.) I no longer have any Martha Stewart inclinations.

Gone are the days of wanting to make everything homemade, spending a huge chunk of time planting the flower pots on my balcony, or making the 12 dozen frosted cutout cookies at Christmas. I still like all of those things and want life to be nice, I just would rather throw some cash at someone to do it for me. Maybe that will change as I draw closer to my 18 month anniversary (which according to brain doctors is the true milestone of recovery), but right now it’s not looking that way. If you know anyone who can provide me with a service that makes my life easier, please feel free to contact me offline. Thank you.

9.) Broccoli is now the most disgusting food/vegetable I can imagine. Barf.

Up until the brain incident I didn’t think much about broccoli either way. I neither loved it or hated it. But in the few months leading up to the brain explosion, I craved spicy Chinese broccoli on a regular basis. I even think the psychopath and I were ordering broccoli on our pizza, which for me was a highly unusual topping choice. (Luckily, I wasn’t craving this because I was pregnant with a little baby psychopath…. I think my brain just was off kilter and for some reason, broccoli was fulfilling some sort of void in the pre-brain-burst world.)

Now? Now is the opposite. Ever since my brain bled, even the thought of broccoli (I’m holding back gag reflexes as I write this now) makes me want to vomit. Broccoli be gone!!!!

8.) I suffered severe pelvic and stomach pain during my recovery as a result of my brain surgeries.

I bring this up because I had no idea that brain surgeries can be orchestrated through your thighs. It’s crazy what they can do today, but basically surgeons can send medicine to your brain through the lovely flabby part of your thigh and up to your head. They did this to me. More than once. And it hurt after.

7.) For the first 6 months of my recovery, I saw dark blurry spots out of my right eye, making it very hard to read or do normal things I used to take for granted.

Apparently my brain blood leaked into my eyeball. The dark spots I saw was blood floating around. (I know, gross.) More than one doctor told me that this would eventually go away on its own. When it didn’t, I opted for surgery on my eyeball to help me see again. When I woke up from that procedure, the surgeon told me that I absolutely had made the right choice. He said that he had never ever seen that much blood in an eyeball before. Yee haw. I win for the most blood in an eyeball! Yay.

In conclusion, my eye is mostly. recovered today, however it still is more sensitive than it was before. And I see clear lightening strikes every once in a while. And I still hate fluorescent lights.

6.) I’ve had over a year of dealing with the fact that a random and jagged portion of my hair was completely shaved off while in the hospital. (See photo.)

Growing out a random section of hair isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it hasn’t been fun either. For a few months, I had to wear my hair up in a crossover-the-bald-spots ponytail. Then for a while I couldn’t wear it up at all because the short growing-in-hair looked crazy, and I needed to wear my longer hair in a crossover part to hide it. Now it looks mostly normal, although a hair and makeup lady at a local news show I was on recently made a comment about the immense amount of bangs that I have. When I explained to her that they aren’t bangs, it’s my hair growing out from a brain surgery shave, she felt bad for judging what she thought was an over zealous bang cutting hair dresser. Nope. Not quite there yet, but I have hopes for a normal-ish looking ponytail this summer.

5.) I still detest mayo, but I now love American cheese.

OMG. Processed chemical cheese is so good! I can’t believe I went through four decades of my life actively avoiding American cheese! Now I think about it all the time! Thank god I also still love other healthy foods, but this chemically creamy feast of heaven is my new favorite topping. Especially on burgers.

4.) I’ve had to get used to having a weird ass shunt in my head.

You don’t see it. But you feel it. It starts with a bulbous bump on the top of my right skull. Then I can feel the tube/cord wrap around my ear and slink down into my throat. After my neck, I can sometimes feel it running over my collar bone. I have a scar on my stomach to remind me where the doctor cut into me so he could secure the end of the tube into my abdomen, but mostly it’s my head and neck that are the constant reminders that it is there.

3.) I rarely desire dessert.

Don’t worry, friends who know me, I still love me some good old white trash candy… I just rarely crave a sweet ending to a meal now.

2.) The only form of exercise I do now is hot vinyasa flow yoga. (Which is pretty amazing.)

Before it was a crazy ass hard and phenomenal boot camp. Then right before the brain burst it was Flywheel spin class. Now it is only yoga. It’s the only thing my brain can take these days. Not sure why. But for now I’m going with it.

1.) I am more grateful for the good parts of my life than I ever was before. Despite a lot of terrible shit, I’ve had some very good things happen too.

Thank you for making it to the end of this long blathering post! Namaste.