Chez Cass Nevada

@cassnevada

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119 posts

Posts

My Excellent Craniotomy

This is my three minute guide to life before and after my emergency craniotomy. I wrote this sometime after the first year of recovery, as I was gaining a little bit of perspective…

Before

Push hard. Set a goal, reach the goal, set a new one asap.

Wherever you are, it’s likely better somewhere else. Keep going.

Due to your morning meditation practice, you are enlightened. Because of this, you…

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#art #bike #brain #craniotomy #journal #sketchbook #stories

Three years ago this month.

I just celebrated the three year mark since my craniotomy. I’ve been…well, sorta gone this past year. See, the last year has been its own kind of special place. As my thinking has returned to something approaching normal, managing the rising complexity of thoughts has been challenging at times. And many many things, like this blog, fell to the wayside.

Basically, I’m back to normal. By that I…

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#art #craniotomy #creative energy

NYTIMES 021218: Insider Section!

#drawing #illustration #ink #Monica Drake #New York Times #nytimes #watercolor #women #women in journalism

The Quiet

After the craniotomy, it’s not that I couldn’t multi-task, it’s that I couldn’t multi-think. I couldn’t even mono-think. Everything was so quiet. And slow. Snail slow. Baseball in august slow. But also sunrise slow. Imperceptible, beautiful. My brain was quiet for the first time in my life—so quiet. No thoughts, no stories, no nothing. Instead, I seemed only able to do what was right in front of…

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#A stitch in time #aphasia #art #artists #creativity #journal #language #Lauren Marks #Quiet #sketchbook practice #slow

NYTimes 020718: ARTS SECTION Sports section. DANCE!

#drawing #illustration #ink #New York Times #sketch #superbowl #watercolor

Big river, little boat

I thought about this Grand Canyon story a few times while I was recovering. Not sure why—thinking of anything was hard, and yet….We are at the mercy of so many things, I guess. **************************** We had just started out, you and me and five others in the little yellow paddle boat, the larger pontoon oar boats leading the way. We were the toughies, in this rig; they were the tourists. I…

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#art #cerebellum #craniotomy #grand canyon #illustration #journal #PTSD #rafting #story telling #tumor

Biz Section, 2/15/18 Just like Sun’s evil brother!

#drawing #illustration #ink #New York Times #nytimes #Sense8 #sketch #watercolor

The story is everything that happened afterward.

When I was in the hospital, I didn’t want friends coming around asking for information, for the story. I had no information. I had a horror story of what happened before I landed in the Emergency Room but none of it made sense, so: no story. What everyone wants to know: was it cancer? No, thank god, it was not. The ER doc who jumped to that conclusion was wrong. Scared the bejesus out of me, and…

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#aphasia #ataxia #brain #cerebellum #craniotomy #drawing #ink #inspiration #journal #micro-essay #PTSD #stroke #tumor #watercolor

Hey little brain

What I’ve discovered: the Cerebellum is like, the red-haired stepchild of neurology. Here’s the old elevator pitch on the Cerebellum: it controls muscle movement and balance. When anyone who knows anything about the brain hears I had a tumorectomy/craniotomy/thingy in my Cerebellum, they say this: Oh! You must have had trouble moving around. You seem great!” or some such. What they mean is: you…

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1/30/18 Op-ed, Mr. Uncomfortable

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#drawing #ikea #illustration #new Yorker times #nytimes #sketch #sweden

1/15/18 Front Page The digital NYT changes during the day, but this is what I saw this morning. Editorial opinion included.

#drawing #illustration #ink #nytimes #sketch #visual bias

First thought

Spend all the money, eat all the food. That is my first thought When I wake up in the ICU It’s dark, soft, quiet, blinking digits and blips on an array of screens hushed conversations in the adjacent window room. They know I’m awake now in the ICU Because I’m laughing And I’m laughing because First of all, I didn’t die and second, well, okay then, Spend all the money, eat all the food. …

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#art #art saves lives #brain #craniotomy #creativity #healing #journal #sketchbook #TBI

I'm sure it's just vertigo.

I’m sure it’s just vertigo.

It all happened so fast. Later, friends sometimes wondered: didn’t you see it coming? No, of course not. I mean, the headaches, I guess. But who has a spate of headaches and thinks: Oh, I better go get an MRI cuz I think I have a tumor? Even the ER doc didn’t jump to the tumor conclusion. He said, it’s probably vertigo, and man: I wanted to believe him so bad. I loved the MRI machine. It was…

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#art #brain #craniotomy #journal #life now #TBI