 Good morning friends and welcome to the second-ever Saturday story time. I'm very excited to tell you this story. I do apologize that it's not a super happy story but I think it is a really interesting and strange one because this is the story of the time. A doctor, yes this really happened, I have photo evidence to prove it, made me shave my head for no reason and they could have stopped it. Yes, even though I have long hair again I am still a little bit bitter. The setup for this story is the winter of 2013. This is right after my house burned down. I was actually living in the rental house as my home was being rebuilt. My life was in shambles, my mental health was in shambles but I graduated college. Now this was like a serious achievement for me depending on who you are. You might think that's a really big deal or not a big deal at all but for me it was. I had gone through so much during my college years, so much health issues, so much trauma that actually graduating I didn't ever think that was really gonna happen so I was really excited. I was ready for like the world to begin. I was ready to leave everything in the past that had happened and just like gung-ho grab life by the horns. I think that's a saying and just full steam ahead. So I graduated late December 2013 and rung in the new year, excited, bread-eyed, bushy tailed for what life had in store for me and on January 2nd I got a phone call from my doctor's office that I had gotten at normal MRI that they kind of finally knew what was going on with my head, why I had migraines all the time, why I felt like crap all the time and that I had a curia malformation. Now, like any self-respecting person who worries too much, I immediately hopped on the internet after hanging up that call and googled everything that I could and essentially found out that what was going on was a genetic condition where essentially my brain was too big for my skull. Just so smart. Just kidding, not at all. Yeah, so my brain was essentially pushing against the back of my skull and the way this is fixed there's no other way to like actually treat it other than treat the symptoms is to actually do brain surgery and the brain surgery that they do for it is pretty freaky. They like peel back your neck muscles, they open up your skull and they make extra space in your spinal column. I met with my doctor and then I met with another doctor, then I met with another doctor and we determined that I would go ahead and have that surgery because it was severe enough. Keep that in mind, please. Now this doctor decided that it'd be good to go ahead and just do it as soon as possible. I schedule it for a couple weeks out and I had never been freaked out for surgery before then. Really? Because it was so normal. Like I just had had so many surgeries before in my life. But this was brain surgery and I was actually kind of freaked out for my life. I'm not gonna kid you. I wrote letters to everybody in my life like thanking them for being in my life just in case I didn't make it through it. It's not like a crazy deadly surgery, but I was pretty worried. On top of being worried, I was also kind of excited at the possibility that this could actually fix everything that had been going on. The reason they discovered this is because I had pain for years and years that they were just treating as pain because I would have to lay down for hours every afternoon because I'd go study at a coffee shop with Brian and then I have to go lay down in the parking lot of that coffee shop in my car, like not actually lay down in the parking lot. Clarification is important. I was just not a functioning human being. I got horrible migraines. I was super dizzy and out of it for no reason. I looked like I was walking around drunk and I like didn't drink and there were just like this host of symptoms that always made me feel like I was a crazy person. And finally, I wasn't a crazy person. Finally, there was actually something wrong that they could fix that all of the symptoms came back to. So along with being terrified for them opening up my brain, I was also excited that this could actually fix things, you know? Recovery was not going to be pretty. If I remember correctly, it was basically like six weeks of laying down, not doing much, being in a significant amount of pain. But hey, like, it's totally worth it, right? Now, here's where the hair thing comes in. There are two ways to do the surgery from my understanding and from the research that I did and I called and I asked my doctor like, hey, which way are you going to do it? Because sometimes they would shave your head and sometimes they would only do part of it. Quick word of warning, I'm about to pop an image up on the screen that if you're squeamish at all, you will not like. So I would just close your eyes for the next 10 seconds. This is what the scar would look like that I would have. Basically, my friends called me like a stegosaurus because the back of my neck would essentially be opened up and have crazy scars along it. Now, if the doctors were going to have to shave my head during surgery, I wanted to do it myself so I could have a party. I mean, if you watch my video about saying goodbye to my foot, I seem to have a thing about like saying goodbye to body parts and hair. But I wanted to do a good job with it because if they're doing surgery, like they're not going to take time to shave your head a nice way, you know what I mean? So I wanted to do it. I wanted to have a party to say like goodbye to my hair because it's kind of emotional as a girl to like lose all your hair. And I called my specialist office, the guy who was going to do the surgery and I asked him, are you going to do it this way? Should I shave my head basically? Is that what's going to happen? And they said yes. They said yes. Okay. That's important. Keep that in mind. Thus, I decided to have a goodbye to my hair shaving party. I invited my best friend down from Gunnison. She lived a few hours away and her and Brian and my dad shaved my head. So I went from looking like this to looking like this. It was understandably an emotional night, but mostly because surgery was the next morning. I wasn't like really that emotional over losing my hair. I was mostly really freaked out about the surgery, right? Because it was a necessary evil because like losing my hair meant that I would be getting better. It was part of the journey. So I had made peace with it because it was a part of the journey. It was a necessary step to getting better. This hair shaving party happened at 9pm the day before my surgery. So with a freshly shaved noggin, a cold head and a warm heart being surrounded by the people who love me, I went to bed, woke up the next morning ready for surgery, freaked out, but ready for it. And this surgery was a little odd. We weren't supposed to meet like at the hospital and immediately prepare for it. He wouldn't have one last meeting to like discuss everything because it was kind of a big deal surgery. Here's the hospital. Here's the doctor's office. We were supposed to meet at the doctor's office and just pop her to the hospital. Get ready and then wheel into surgery. So the look on the doctor's face should probably have told me something when he walked in and saw me with a shaved head and he was like, oh, didn't anyone tell you about your MRI? And I was like, no? Because here's the thing, he was not a totally crappy doctor and he ordered a second MRI just to confirm everything before surgery. And then he brought me out to the hallway, popped the MRI up and explained why he no longer thought surgery was going to be effective. Yeah, I did have a QR email information, but he thought that the risk of the surgery outweighed any possible benefits. That kind of surgery can leave you with more pain. It's a risky surgery. It's not something they want to do unless they are like convinced that the risks of it are lower than the upsides. And when he saw on the second MRI exactly how big it was, he said it wasn't comfortable doing it that day. He wanted more testing. He wanted me to go see more neurologists and more things. And this probably shouldn't have been my first reaction, but I was standing there in the hallway wearing like this stegosaurus hat because like I said, my friends had made fun of me for like being a stegosaurus with the scars I was going to have with a shaved head as a 23 year old girl. And I was like, when did you know this information? I am here ready to walk over to the hospital to have brain surgery. And I shaved my head last night. When did you know this information? And he was like, oh, someone should have told you yesterday around four or five. Guess what? They didn't. No one told me. No one told me. The vital message that my surgery was canceled, that I wasn't a brain surgeon, that I didn't need to shave my freaking head. Because I did tell them by the way that I was going to shave my head in case anyone is wondering. So I did that for no damn reason. I was pretty mad. And Brian was there and going to test the fact that this was not a pretty day for me. Like I was not, I was not doing my best. I was not being my best self on that day as one can imagine. And the doctor then felt that it'd be appropriate to make a joke. And this might not be horrible to anyone else. But was like, I'd like you to meet with another one of my colleagues later today. Looks like you're not doing anything later because you're not having surgery. And that was when I lost it. And I ran back into like the doctor's office, like the room, and I sat down in the bed and I hit the wall with the side of my fist. I didn't like leave a marketing like that. I never got like visibly upset in a doctor's office before. It was not, I'm not proud of that moment, just lost it, just sobbing. Not because I lost my hair, but because like the hope of everything being fixed just dissipated. Long story short, I went home. I had a legit pity party in bed for a solid five hours. And then we went back and met with the doctor later that day, who when I told about my horseback riding accident, because that could have like contributed to the issues I was having told me like, Hey, horses aren't safe. You shouldn't have been doing that. And I was like, Hey, that's super helpful, Dr. Man. Anyways, that then led to like a two year search for solutions and what could really be going on. I ended up at the Mayo Clinic. That's a different story in itself. Long story short, I haven't had the surgery and I won't unless something changes, which they don't expect that it will. Symptoms are better than they were, mostly because I know how to handle them a little bit better. I really good doctors now, who I like, who don't make dumb jokes at my expense and in opportune moments. And I learned that I could rock a shaved head. It actually wasn't that terrible. It was not what I would have chosen, but I did learn that people are super nice to you in public because I think they all thought that I was really sick. So I got lots of compliments, like like hush tones compliments, like sweetheart, I just love your hair. I was like, thanks. I appreciate that. So that's what I would have chosen. And I think you think that I'm sick, but thank you. So as most hair does, my hair eventually grew back. I had to go through a stage of it being that awkward in between that nobody likes. But you know what, that's a small price to pay the time I hated that doctor because I just wanted a solution. I hated him for not doing the surgery because I was young and immature, but he did the right thing in postponing surgery and pausing it and looking for more answers. And I'm glad that he did that. I was not glad for a really long time. So my bitterness towards him and his lack of giving appropriate messages to staff or staff not making appropriate calls and having to shave my head for no reason, that bitterness took a little while to dissipate, but eventually left. And in the end, I realized he was actually a pretty good doctor for canceling the surgery. He did not feel comfortable doing. And I don't have any cool stegosaurus scars, but I also didn't have to have an unnecessary brain surgery. So I guess we all won in the end. So there we have it. If you're a doctor, remember to actually call people yourself if you have vital messages to give them about the next day. We know that they're going to be shaving their head. Patient is a 23 year old girl. Thanks for listening guys. I hope you like this Saturday story time. I'm excited to bring it back next week. I have a very exciting story for you guys then too. Let me know if you've heard of or had any similar experiences down the comment section. I look forward to chatting with you guys there and I will see you in the next video. I love you guys. I'm thinking of you and I will talk to you soon.