Phenomenon

Remember the movie “Phenomenon”?  John Travolta plays a character named George; he’s sort of dim-witted.  The beginning of the film is George trying to keep a rabbit (or some sort of animal), out of his garden by putting a fence around the garden.  But the rabbit still seems to be able to get in and George can’t understand it.  (Spoiler alert) One night George wakes up with the realization that the rabbit was inside the garden when he put the fence up!  Well, this just doesn’t happen with brain tumors (which is why George was suddenly getting to be a genius). 

For like three months or more I couldn’t figure out why every Britta filter I put in my water picture kept coming loose.  I’d be filling up a glass of water and the lid would open, and the filter would fall out making a mess.  And I’d really hate it when I would put water in to be filtered and then notice the filter was out of place once again!  I kind of thought I was just in this weird Britta Filter hell, reserved just for me.  Then one day I was going through the same Britta Filter motions as any other day when it dawned on me – I was putting too much water in the picture, and it was forcing the filter to come loose!  All I could think was, how perplexing it was to me and of course happy to have figured it out. 

My IQ in spatial relations was high; if I received something that needed to be put together, I had no problem doing it without the instructions and usually in a fraction of the assembly time indicated.  Not any more… that’s what being a stroke survivor is all about.  Being able to get to the point in our recovery to accept the changes, as hard as it may be.  We are where we are.