Camp Football

All right. So I promised Courtney yesterday that I would write about this one, so here it goes!

As I blogged about yesterday I have been deaning Sr. High Rally Camp at Camp Mechuwana since 1997. The summer of 2004 Alex Blackstone and Doug Dieuveuil started coming as campers. The following summer Courtney Carter started attending, too. The three of them were quite a hoot and kept me on my toes. Alex was a PK (Pastor's Kid) like me. Doug, or Dougie as we affectionately called him and Alex were good friends. Courtney was Courtney, and I got along so well with her. All three were people that the other campers would look up to.

Rally Camp the summer of 2007 was especially wonderful for me. It was the first summer that I didn't have to worry about having seizures as I had my Temporal Lobectomy that January. It had been just over six months since the surgery; I had my drivers’ license back and had tasted the freedom of not worrying about where I would be if I had another seizure. I had already been weaned off of the Tegretol XR, and was seeing myself increase with energy. I had also turned into a human barometer. Every time we were going to get snowstorms or rain I could tell 24 hours in advance as the location on my head that they cut off would itch like crazy. It's been five and a half years and that still works. I think that I should become a meteorologist and just not have to go to school for it!

Anyway, I so loved camp that summer. The kids were now old enough to be in Day Camp, so I was able to spend from breakfast until dinner with my campers. Nick would get them from Day Camp in the afternoon, get them cleaned up and ready for dinner and then I would spend time with them after supper and get them ready for bed. One afternoon we were down by the lake for Arts and Crafts. A few of the campers did not want to do whatever it was that they were to be making that day, so they asked if they could throw a football around. Nick, Jordan and I were sitting outside the Arts and Crafts cabin and told them that it was ok. So Dougie and Alex started tossing that lovely piece of leather around. A few times it came really close to us and a few times Nick said, "Guys, you are chucking it a little too close here. The last thing that you want to do is clobber her in the head and make her go funny again." We were all of course laughing about it, but the last thing I wanted to have happen would be to have something heavy hit the left side of my head. "Oh sure, Nick. Don't worry, we'll be careful."

The next thing that I knew was that I felt a giant "WHAM" right on the left side of my head. I remember tilting over and splattering onto the boardwalk. I think I got knocked out for a brief moment. I also can now say that the way they do it in the movies is true; when you get knocked out and then come to you can see little yellow birdies floating around your head. "WHAT DID I TELL YOU?" I heard Nick's loud, boisterous voice yell. It took a few minutes and I didn't think that I needed to go to the nurse, but let's just say that Alex and Dougie were exceptionally well behaved for the rest of the week! The two of them were so apologetic, and it was ok with me. All I could think of was "Wow. What would have happened if the bad part of my brain was still there?"

As I said, it's been five and a half years since that surgery, and I still am a human barometer. And I still think, though not as often, "What would happen to me now if I had another one?" I think there will always be this little thing in the back of my head thinking the "What if's?" Living without the daily threat of seizures has really made me learn how to live again. I know I am the same person who went into that operating room, but things about me have definitively changed (which I will discuss in another blog). But learning to live again has been an extremely eye-opening experience. And I can't wait to see what it brings next.