• Home
  • About Me
    • My Bio
    • Sponsor Info
    • Giveaways
    • My Other Freelance Writing
    • Video Hello
    • blogging advice
  • Love + Relationships
    • Dating
    • Engagements
    • Letters to my future husband
    • Love Lounge
    • marriage
    • Memo To Men
    • Open Letters
    • Singlehood
    • virginity
    • Weddings
  • Fashion + Style
    • beauty
    • do or don’t
    • fashion
    • hair
    • jewelry
    • men’s fashion
    • women’s fashion
  • Art + Design
    • art
    • design
    • dream home
    • flowers
    • illustration
    • Photographs
    • posters
    • tattoos
    • typography
  • Disability Dialogue
    • body image
    • Dating
    • Dating With Disabilities
    • depression
    • disabilities in the media
    • Disability
  • Life + Leisure
    • babies
    • birthday
    • books
    • dream vacation
    • Entertainment and Media
    • etsy love
    • family
    • food
    • gift guide
    • holidays
    • In The Pursuit of Happiness
    • link love
    • magazines
    • Man Candy
    • movies
    • music
    • peek inside
    • Shopping
    • TV
    • would you rather

Monday, May 8, 2017

Here’s a New Side of Me You’ve Never Seen Before…

new side of meFirst off, before you even ask…NO!! The title of this blog post is not designed to be clickbait or deceiving in any way. I mean this in the most literal sense. Get ready for a new side of me you’ve never seen before. It’s me, stripped down to my true essence. No pretenses. No pretending. I’m pretty much showing you the deepest part of myself. Literally.

Are you ready? Are you sure you can handle it? I mean, I don’t want to induce heart attacks or anything…

OK…

*Deep breaths*

By now, you’re probably wondering about those MRI scans above — pretty random, I know! You might even be thinking, “What the even heck? Who’s are those? Is this blog turning creepy or what?”

new side of me new side of meWell, friends, those are my medical scans! That’s me — in the flesh. Well, deeper than flesh, I suppose. I’ve talked a lot about my sexy brain in the past and when I found these old scans in the closet a couple months ago, I couldn’t resist sharing them with you. They’re from 2001 when I was a wee lass of just 19. Also, bonus points if you can spot all my hardware! I’ve got lots of titanium rods in my spine!!

And yes, only I would tape them to the window when photographing them — you know, for optimal sun! I figure you have to see all the crevices of my brain. Now, I’m not sure what I should do with them. They’ve been taking up space in my room, but it’d feel sort of weird to just throw them away, you know? I mean, they’re a part of me, after all. Maybe I should save them and autograph them when my someday-memoir comes out? Is that odd? I’m kidding — well, only half kidding, really. If I talk about my brain surgery in my book, I could be an awesome promotional tie-in. I doubt any author has done something like that before! Oooooh, I’m calling dibs now!

Please tell me I’m not the only one who has random medical scans of themselves lying around the house. Do you, friends? And, yes, I’m aware that this is probably the weirdest question I’ve ever asked on this blog… xoxo

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

1 Comment Filed Under: Brain Surgery, confidence, Disability

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

My Essay on Dr. Oz’s The Good Life: “I Was a Medical Mystery”

I’m really proud of my newest essay, friends! I got to write about my medical days, which is one of my favorite topics, and it brought back A LOT of memories, to say the least. The piece How Doctors Almost Missed the Fact That My Spine Was Compressing My Brain Stem ran on Dr. Oz’s The Good Life last week and the one thing I kept thinking as I was writing it?

“Has it really been 22 years already?“

Alas, it has! Here’s an excerpt of the essay, which sort of reads like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy…

By this point, all my fears had vanished; I just wanted to get this surgery over with and know that everything was going to be OK. The long surgery was a success, and I had rods placed in my neck to fuse the rest of my spine and keep it from compressing my brain stem. Afterward, the neurosurgeon told us that when he removed the spine from the brain stem, the brain stem vibrated for more than 10 minutes because it had been under so much pressure for so long.

I spent three months at home recovering before going back to school. I had to wear a halo frame to keep my neck still while everything healed, but thankfully, everything healed and life slowly but surely went back to normal for me.

Looking back now, 22 years later, I have no doubt that it was my parents who saved my life with their insistence that I get an MRI. They never once wavered or blindly accepted the doctors’ excuses and assertions.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

1 Comment Filed Under: Brain Surgery, Disability, family, My Other Freelance Writing, Uncategorized, work

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

On My Habit of Falling In Love With Medical Residents

So, not to get all psychologically insightful and heavy today, but I have this habit of falling for people in the medical profession. More specifically, my heart does back flips for those doctor-in-training types — interns, residents, fellows, etc — who are poised to be the future of modern medicine. It’s getting quite bad, this tendency of mine. I hesitate to call it an obsession, but really, maybe I should just come right out and be honest about it all. Because, if I am being honest, this habit is nothing new, like a new rash you discover one morning when you wake up and can’t remember just how you got it. On the contrary, I know EXACTLY how I got this “disease” and it’s been years in the making.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the hospital — you probably already know that, right? Anyway, those white, hallowed halls were my happy place, the place where I felt at once safe and protected; it’s ironic, I suppose, seeing as how my hospital stays were typically some of my most unhealthy times, but apparently, I never felt better.

And, something tells me that my comfort in an otherwise scary place can only be attributed to those would-be doctors in their doctorly lab coats. Picture it: I’m lying in bed (and no, this is not the start of a dime-store romance novel…), usually asleep or watching some mindless daytime TV, when I hear the familiar pitter-patter of feet and overhear the hushed conversations. Then, like angels rising from the mist, there they were. They were like Greek gods coming down from Mount Olympus — make no mistake here, for I am most certainly NOT exaggerating about this.

There was the group that followed my orthopedic surgeon on his rounds, some of them furiously taking notes while others simply looked on and tried to soak it all in. There was the medical resident who assuaged all my fears when I had to be rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago in 2002 after I had an allergic reaction to medicine. When my heart began pounding, I didn’t know if it was because of the allergic reaction or because of his intoxicating charms. And then there was also the resident who I met when I was 13 and in the hospital for my brain surgery. I needed an MRI and remember being scared and anxious. He stayed with me during the entire procedure, and, well, needless to say, my fears quickly fell away.

Now, like I said, the psychological reason behind my love is pretty obvious. This is all a typical case of transference. After all, it doesn’t take Freud to figure out what all these medical residents have symbolized to me over the years. They were the big, bad superheros with the medical know-how and gadgets to fix everything and make it all better; sometimes, I even imagined their lab coats were their capes that blew in the wind behind them as they hurriedly marched down those hospital corridors with the utmost sense of purpose. I saw them in this soothing, caretaker role and couldn’t help but marvel at their gentleness and genuineness — people bright-eyed and yet to be jaded from the stress that comes with years of practicing medicine.

Plus, let’s not discount their sexy brains, which is what really got me in the end. They attracted me faster than an ant to a Snickers bar on a hot summer day, and I wanted to bottle up all that hot, sexy brain essence and save it for a rainy day.

Looking back, I suppose I have a lot to thank those medical residents for. They swooped in right when I needed them, superhero capes and all, and helped me get through some of the toughest times in my life. And here’s to the doctors of tomorrow — stay smart for me and never forget the importance of a calming bedside manner! xoxo

P.S. Oh, and don’t even get me started on my deep, deep love for the men on Grey’s Anatomy. Combine my love of fictional characters with the fact that these fictional characters are doctors, and, well, just watch my heart explode like a stick of dynamite! Owen! Sloan! Karev! Avery! BE STILL MY HEART!!! 🙂

[Photos via We Heart It]

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

2 Comments Filed Under: Brain Surgery, Breakup/Love Letters, Disability, hospitals, Love Lessons, Uncategorized

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

12 (Medical) Things You Don’t Know About Me

Confession: I have a pretty big love affair with US Weekly. It’s off the charts, actually. And because I’m a naturally nosy person, one of my favorite columns is “25 Things You Don’t Know About Me,” where your favorite stars bravely and brazenly confess to those once-hidden and secret facts about themselves — I love Frosted Flakes! I have a Bachelorette viewing party every week! I drove a limo around Hollywood before I made it!

Ohh! Such revelations! Well, I just made those up, but they totally sound legit, don’t they? Anyway, I thought it would be fun to put my own twist on this little getting-to-know-you game.

I introduce: 12 (Medical) Things You Don’t Know About Me.

Are you ready? Get ready for the revelations…

1. My parents didn’t get a diagnosis for me until several days after I was born. They even found themselves looking through medical journals trying to “find me.” 

2. I didn’t take my first steps until I was 4. Apparently, I wasn’t into it because I was crying the whole time. 

3. Because of a clef pallet, I didn’t sip from a straw until around 3. I loved it, though! 

4. My longest hospital stay was 31 days. 

5. I once had a central line and a portacath at the same time. 

6. My veins are covered in scar tissue from being used so much and it’s hard to find one. Case in point: I went for a blood test last week and the phlebotomist couldn’t find one! 

7. It took 22 sticks one time to find a vein for an I.V. 

8. Another time, they had to cut into my wrist to find one. I’ve still got the scar to prove it. 

9. After one of my spine surgeries, it was hard to wean me off the respirator. 

10. After my last surgery, in 1996, I had a hospital bed in my room for three months. I loved it. My friends and I would sit in it and play Nintendo! That’s me in the photo, above! 

11. I used to get dehydrated A LOT when I was a kid. 

12. My doctor dubbed The Melissa Blake Diet as a benchmark for deciding when I’d had enough I.V. fluid and could go home. They’d hook me up to said I.V., I’d recover for a day or two, order a cheeseburger from the cafeteria and go home.

Now, of course there are more things I could mention, but we’d be here all day, so I thought it best to limit the list to 12. I’m sure I’ll do another one in the future.

What are some things people might be surprised to learn about you, friends? Any secrets you’ve been dying to share? Now is the time — and place! — to do it! xoxo

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

4 Comments Filed Under: Brain Surgery, childhood week, Disability, family, hospitals, Uncategorized

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Surgery anniversaries: 20 years ago (the story continues…)

We continue our look back at my most serious and intense surgery to date — my brain surgery. It took place 20 years ago this month. What sort of celebration does an anniversary like that call for? Am I the only one who celebrates her surgical milestones? Catch up on Part One if you haven’t.

I felt like a walking time bomb that could explode at any moment while we waited for the MRI results. Why couldn’t doctors find out what was wrong with me? Was this merely all in my head? All I knew was that I needed answers, and no one could give me any. As a 13-year-old girl, all I wanted to do was watch TV and go shopping, but instead, here I was, being poked and prodded. I was just downright scared and confused, hoping it would all be over soon.

The meeting with the doctor to find out the results of the MRI was overwhelming. He brought out the MRI scans and pointed to a compression in my neck. There it was, illuminated on the screen: the culprit that had been plaguing me for four months. A Basilar Invagination. That was the technical term he used for this very rare condition. My spine was growing up into my brain stem (the part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate) and compressing it. Doctors had only fused the lower half of my spine two years earlier, so since I was still growing, the top half had no place to go but upward! The doctor said that most people have a little tip on the end of their brain stem, which I don’t have. If I did have it, he said, I would have stopped breathing and become brain dead the minute the compression started. As the doctor kept talking, everything began to happen in slow motion. His lips rattled off treatment options. His hands kept gesturing rapidly to the giant scan, which, through my teenager eyes, seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. Everything seemed to blur together into one big mess.

We found a wonderful doctor at the University of Chicago who performed the 14-hour surgery. It’s strange, but for the first time, I felt a sense of calm before this surgery. For once, I wasn’t petrified of entering that big operating room. I was ready for the surgery. It was my only hope of getting better. I stayed in the hospital for a few weeks, part of the time on a ventilator, and then had to wear a halo frame for four months to keep my neck still while it healed. I’d find out later that my brain stem was under so much pressure that when the doctor removed the spine, the brain stem vibrated for close to 10 minutes!

If this experience has taught me anything, it’s to be your own advocate. Doctors may be brilliant people, but they don’t know everything. I learned that the hard way, but now I know that you can never be too careful when it comes to your health. Ask questions. Get second opinions. In short, take your health into your hands. If my parents hadn’t been my biggest advocates, I would be sitting here today, a tube sticking out of my stomach, instead of a persistent and determined young woman. And yes, I can – and do – eat whatever I want now! I think this blog is a pretty good reflection of that! xoxo

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Email

5 Comments Filed Under: Brain Surgery, childhood week, Disability, Uncategorized

Next Page »
So About What I Said is a daily blog that covers relationships, disabilities, lifestyle and pop culture. I love to laugh and have been known to overshare. I also have an unabashed obsession with pop music, polo shirts, and PEZ dispensers. Read more...

Let's Be Friends
Pinterest
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Bloglovin
RSS

Contact Me
Subscribe by Email

About Us

dotted lineAbout Us
archive

Archives

So About What I Said © 2023 · Design by Maiedae · Development by High Note Designs

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.