Opinion: With little help from doctors, I mapped my recovery from brain surgery

I stood in the open doorway to my house, swaying slightly, hesitant to enter what had become uncharted territory. It was my first day back home from having brain surgeries. Two had been planned to remove cavernous angiomas, tangles of fragile blood vessels in my brain that had bled. The third was a surprise, needed when I sprang a leak of cerebral spinal fluid.

I’d been diagnosed after months of worsening symptoms, including problems with balance and vertigo, weird changes in hearing, losing and regaining my sense of taste, and strange seizure-like episodes during which my eyes closed and my body became unresponsive but I was fully conscious, aware of what was happening around me. The symptoms were tracked to brain bleeds.