Recovering Myself - What a Brain Aneurysm Taught Me About Care, Survival and Worth

Three and a half months ago, I should have died.

That's not drama. It's not hyperbole.

At my last telehealth appointment, my neurologist told me that when they put me on a plane from Launceston to Hobart, based on the emergency department report describing the bleed in my brain, they did not expect me to survive the flight.

Instead, I arrived fully conscious.

At some point between a catastrophic brain bleed and emergency neurosurgery, I was apparently still reciting bush poetry.

That sounds about right.

What followed were multiple procedures to treat both a ruptured and an unruptured aneurysm. During the third procedure, I suffered a stroke. Months later, I am still recovering.

At least, that's how I've been describing it.

Recovering my strength.

Recovering my health.

Recovering the use of my hand.

Learning to trust my body again.

Learning how to live with fatigue.

Learning to live with the knowledge that recovery isn't really something that ends. There will be more scans. More monitoring. Perhaps more procedures. That uncertainty now comes with me.

When I sat down to write this essay, I thought it was going to be about why I resigned from my charity shop job.

That seemed straightforward enough.

I'd spent five years there. I loved the work. I had recently made the decision not to return.

I thought the story was about leaving.

Then I started writing.

And something unexpected happened.

The more I reflected, the less interested I became in the job itself.

The charity shop wasn't really the story.

The aneurysm wasn't even the story.

Recovery was.

Or so I thought.

Because the more I sat with that word, the more it began to unravel.

For months I have told people that I am recovering.

Recovering my independence.

Recovering my confidence.

Recovering my life.

Then today, while reflecting on everything that had happened, I found myself saying something that immediately stopped me in my tracks.

"I'm recovering myself."

To my surprise, I cried.

In fact, I think it was the first time I'd cried since the aneurysm rupture.

Not because the thought was sad.

Because it felt true.

And once the tears passed, another thought followed close behind.

What if recovery isn't the right word at all?

Recovery suggests returning to someone you used to be.

It suggests going back.

Restoration.

A return to normal.

I'm no longer convinced that's what's happening.

Looking back now, I can see that caring didn't begin when I became an actual carer.

It didn't start when my father became ill.

It didn't start when my mother needed support.

It didn't start in a charity shop.

I've spent much of my adult life looking after people.

As a freelance stylist for more than thirty years, I loved working as part of creative teams. I was often one of the people holding those teams together.

Keeping productions moving.

Solving problems.

Supporting colleagues.

Encouraging younger creatives.

Making sure everyone else shone.

At the end of a successful project, I was always quick to congratulate the team.

I rarely stopped to congratulate myself.

The same pattern followed me through relationships, through work, through family, through volunteering and, eventually, through caregiving.

Different circumstances.

Same instinct.

Be useful.

Step up.

Carry more.

Hold things together.

I don't think I realised what that was costing me.

Or perhaps I never stopped long enough to ask.

One of the things I've learned is that boundaries are not the same as protection.

For much of my life, I thought I had boundaries.

What I really had were responsibilities.

I still carried other people's problems home.

I still worried.

I still rescued.

I still absorbed.

Then the aneurysm arrived with all the subtlety of a freight train.

One moment I was carrying on as usual.

It is remarkable how quickly a near-death experience strips away illusion.

It forced me to ask a harder question.

If my boundaries weren't protecting me, were they really boundaries at all?

When I considered returning to the charity shop, I assumed I would simply pick up where I'd left off.

Instead, I discovered that the shop I had left no longer existed.

The goalposts had moved.

The culture had changed.

The expectations had changed.

Most importantly, I had changed.

For years I would have looked at that situation and thought:

"Right. Let's fix it."

This time I did something different.

I looked at the facts.

Not what I hoped was true.

Not what I wished would be true.

What was actually true.

And the facts told me that returning wasn't returning at all.

It was stepping into something entirely different.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I asked a question I had never given much weight before.

"What is this going to cost me?"

And this time I listened to the answer.

Neither of my aneurysms had fully occluded after surgery. My neurologists had told me to keep my blood pressure down. Going back would have made that impossible.

I resigned.

Not because I was angry.

Not because I was bitter.

Not because I regretted the five years, I'd spent there.

I resigned because surviving had taught me something.

The life I was lucky enough to keep had value too.

Many carers die before the person they care for.

Their needs become secondary.

Then tertiary.

Then invisible.

I understand that differently now.

Not because someone explained it to me.

Because I lived it.

I spent much of my life believing there would always be time later.

Time to rest.

Time to focus on myself.

Time to look after my own health.

Time to ask what I needed.

Then one day you're on a plane to Hobart and the specialists aren't sure you'll survive the journey.

Suddenly, later is no longer guaranteed.

Today my hand still shakes when I write.

I still get tired.

I still have scans ahead of me.

Recovery remains ongoing.

But the most important thing I've learned has nothing to do with aneurysms.

It is this:

I am not superwoman.

I am not indestructible.

I am worthy of the same care I've spent a lifetime giving to everyone else.

That idea sounds simple.

It isn't.

For some of us, it's revolutionary.

Especially if you're the helper.

The mother.

The daughter.

The volunteer.

The advocate.

The caregiver.

The person who always steps up.

The person who quietly holds everything together.

For months I've been describing what happened to me as recovery.

But recovery suggests a return.

And I haven't returned.

The woman who survived a ruptured aneurysm is not the same woman who walked into it.

She's more aware of her limits.

More protective of her energy.

More conscious of her worth.

More willing to include herself in the circle of care.

Perhaps I'm not recovering a previous version of myself at all.

Perhaps, after sixty-four years, I'm finally meeting her.

And if that's true, then perhaps the greatest gift hidden inside all of this isn't survival.

Perhaps it's the realisation that life is still unfolding. As long as we draw breath, there's time for reflection and for change.

That growth didn't end.

That change didn't end.

That becoming didn't end.

It is a privilege, after nearly dying, to discover there's still someone new left to become.