Adapted from the Twitter feed and mined from the notebooks, Tuesday, November 5, 2019. Posted Sunday morning, December 8.

Mrs M, in consultation with her neurologist, having her head examined and showing she's made of sterner stuff, Tuesday, November 5, 2019.
That’s Mrs M in the photo up top, looking at an image from her latest MRI with her neurologist. I don’t know how she does it, but she’s been determined from the beginning to see what’s going on inside there. Me, I cringe and look away, forcing myself to take peeks out of the corner of a squinted eye whenever it sounds like the doctor or the technician is pointing out a salient detail. Like I’ve said this many times: this would all be fascinating if the subject of fascination wasn’t my wife. But Mrs M is made of sterner stuff.
In the midst of our now going on two months of rounds to the surgeon’s and the image facilities down in Westchester, as they try to get her shunts adjusted properly to get her hydrocephalus under control, Mrs M had a routine six-month check-up with her neurologist. His office is in Kingston, an hour to our north. That gave Mrs M an hour to fret on our way there.
“Where are we going again?” she asked a dozen times.
“To see your neurologist,” I said each time as if she hadn’t asked the question before.
“Oh, that’s right. And why am I seeing him?”
“It’s just a routine checkup. He’s just going to assess the progress of your recovery.”
“So I’m going to have my head examined.”
“Yep.”
“Lance, did you ever think you’d have a wife who needed her head examined?”
She was being funny. And every time she said it she made us both laugh. She asks this question a lot, not just on this trip but on on other occasions. It seems to be whenever she starts to feel down about her condition and begins to lose confidence and hope. I have a standard comeback---“Yes, but I didn’t think it would be involve MRIs, CT scans, and X rays. I thought it would be on the couch.”---that she seems to find both funny and reassuring.
Another question she asks often in the same vein isn’t so much a question as an apology. It’s this one:
“Lance, did you ever think you’d marry such a goofus? I try not to be a goofus. I try to be more of a gallant. But it’s hard. Being a goofess just comes more naturally, these days.”
As we got closer to Kingston, she grew more confident about where we were going and switched from asking to stating.
“I’m seeing the neurologist, right?”
“Yep.”
“And what do I have to know going in?”
“Nothing. You just have to answer his questions.”
That would satisfy her for the moment, but pretty soon she’d loop back again.
“I’m seeing the neurologist, right?”
“Yep.”
“And what do I have to know going in?”
About the fourth or fifth time, though, I said, “Nothing. You don’t have to know a thing. In fact, it’s better if you don’t know anything going in.”
“Why?”
“Because then you might be telling him what I told you and then he couldn’t tell what you know from what you’re repeating.”
“Oh, I get it. He wants me to be myself.”
“That’s right.”
“So I just have to be myself.”
“You just have to be yourself.”
“Ok. I can do that. I can be myself.”
“Yes,” I said, “You can. You’ve always been good at being yourself. That’s why people like you so much.”
“That’s why?”
“Yes. Because by you being yourself so well they feel like they can be themselves.”
“Is that why you liked me?”
“Big part of it. I needed help being myself.”
“And I helped you with that?”
“You sure did.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
“And I’m seeing the neurologist?”
“You’re seeing the neurologist.”
“And I don’t have to know anything.”
“You don’t have to know anything.”
“I can just be myself.”
“You can just be yourself.”
Today is the 40th anniversary of our first date. It’s true that I asked her out because she was good at being herself. There was no posing or pretense about her and no expectation that I would be anybody with her but myself, and inhibited, introverted prig that I was, I needed all the encouragement to be myself I could get. I still need it. She still gives it. Just by being herself.
And nobody is better at being herself.
Filed under Diary of Her Recovery.
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