Old Friends

January 18, 2025
by Karen J. McLean
2 min read
Steering wheel of a Suzuki SX4 named BuzzI took Buzz — my beloved, geriatric, palliative with a DNR, nearly-17-year-old Suzuki SX4 — for a drive today. Buzz and I became best pals in July of 2013, when I bought him using my insurance settlement after I was struck by a car while crossing a street.  He still runs, and is road-safe, but his exhaust system is hanging by a thread and it’s just a matter of time. One bump will spell the end of the line for us. It’s hard to put into words how much this little (faded) red car means to me. In a purely practical sense, he’s my independence: a mobility aid, freedom to live when my body lets me, and freedom to go when and where I want, if I just need some salt air or to visit the crows at my favourite cemetery. With Buzz, I don’t have to try to walk down my uneven, slippery driveway with my current balance issues in order to get to the bus stop four houses away, or to be picked up by a kind friend. I don’t have to try and make my (dys)abilities match up with Doug’s schedule, which is not only difficult, but stressful, and literally makes my chronic illnesses worse. A side-view of a red Suzuki SX4 overlooking the Canso Causeway in Nova ScotiaBuzz is my happy place, and he is the one place I have where I can control the space immediately around me, and how much stimuli my brain is taking in. His interior is consistent. Only I change it. The noise level is what I choose, based on how much I can take. It’s impossible for a writer like me to not see the similarities between Buzz’s decline and my own. His passenger air bag sensor is on permanently, and he has lost his all-wheel drive ability now that the rear drive shaft has gone. His undercarriage was described by a mechanic in Massachusetts as “the rustiest car I’ve ever seen”, and his frame is rotting. God knows I’m crumbling too. But we have made so many beautiful memories together, and nearly every important person in my life has met him. Usually, a car is just a car. But once in a lifetime, it’s Buzz.

Morning Page(s): 26 June 2024

June 26, 2024
by Karen J. McLean
1 min read
2 Comments
Each morning I write at least one page in an A5 Itoya Profolio Oasis Notebook.  This is my version of Julia Cameron's recommended practice of writing three pages by hand first thing each morning.  I commit to doing at least one page each day, depending on how my hands are doing. Morning Pages are meant to be a brain-dumping, a clearing of the writing machinery, to get the gunk out of the way so the "real stuff" can start flowing.  And, in their own way, Morning Pages become a genre of "real stuff", too.  They provide an unedited, stream-of-consciousness, snapshot of what you are semi-consciously thinking, before the world gets ahold of you for the day.  Morning Pages aren't meant to be re-read (I tend to flip back through my archive of completed notebooks), and they are never supposed to be shared. I'm breaking that last rule with you today.  What tumbled out of my brain and hand this morning was clearly meant to be a blog post.  So here it is, word-for-word, and paragraph by paragraph, the way it came out: Continue reading

You Are Not Your Brain

December 12, 2023
by Karen J. McLean
3 min read
3 Comments
I am thinking of renaming this blog "Scrambled Brains and Twisted Flippers."  I quite like that idea, as it encompasses in a slightly irreverent way my two invisible disabilities. But I have learned that when one is recovering from a serious concussion, what seems like a brilliant idea can sometimes just be one's brain firing off in all directions.  Making decisions with a broken decision-maker can have mixed results. And so I wait — as I have been waiting for more than two months now — for the neural pathways to rewire themselves, to be able to walk without a list to starboard, to be able to look down and then up without falling over, to see who Karen 3.0 will turn out to be ... My sense of humour is still intact.  I am amused by the irony of the situation.  This past spring, I was awarded an arts grant to write a memoir about recovering from a serious brain injury I sustained in 2012, but my writing it has come to a screeching halt, due to the Serious Brain Injury of 2023.  Perhaps this is the Universe's way of reminding me of all the little aspects of post-concussion life I might have forgotten a decade later? In a way, I'm glad that this is familiar territory.  In 2012, I had no idea that the thoughts in my head might or might not really be me.  The voice in my head sounds the same, after all.  But this time I'm aware of the need to sit back, to see if the Good Ideas still feel like good ideas in a week or so. Brain injury affects your personality.  It lowers (or eradicates) your inhibitions and sense of social graces.  Dealing with a scrambled brain is kind of like having an out of body experience as your own evil twin. It's hard to share what I'm experiencing without sounding like a steaming pile of self-pity: Can't work; can't spit out the right words in the right order; can't handle computer screens; can't handle too much sensory information; can't drive; can't be a passenger; can't take a shower without that overwhelming brain fatigue that normally follows a weekend of doing income taxes; can't focus; can't regulate emotions or reactions; can't trust myself ... A doorknob.  That's what did this to me.  That, and the cumulative history of brain injuries, big and little, since I was 17 years old.  The doorknob I slammed off the top of my head when I bent over to pick up something in late September was Concussion No. 10. So ... I wait. And take notes. And pat myself on the back for somehow managing to post this via my phone. I am not my brain. My brain is broken. I am not. I am discouraged, and lonely, and dizzy, and cranky, and broke. But not broken.
This post was created as part of Two Writing Teachers’ Slice of Life Challenge. Slice of Life Writing Challenge You can view other writers’ contributions this week via the comments here.