Cheddar or Jack?

I was in a Del Taco last week when I had a disturbing experience. For those of you out-of-towners, Del Taco is Mexican fast food--cheap, tasty, and my favorite since high school. Ordering there is usually a no-brainer for me: one green burrito with extra cheese and sour cream to go, please. In case your doctor hasn't made this perfectly clear, there isn't anything remotely healthful in said green burrito. Not the beans, not the cheese, not the flour tortilla, not the sour cream, and especially not the extra cheese. If your cholesterol was in check before you indulged, it isn't now.

However, on this Sunday morning I was feeling like something a little different, most likely not from a health consciousness but out of sheer boredom. So I looked up at the menu board, saw pictures of two chicken quesadillas, and decided on one of those. But which one? They both looked yummy, but there was something about that green sauce, the white cheese--yes, that's the one for me. So I stepped up to the counter, ordered the chicken cheddar quesadilla, and took a seat.

When the food arrived, however, so did the tears. Cheddar isn't the white cheese! Monterey Jack is. Cheddar is the yellow cheese (which is really orange, but that's a blog for another day). An innocent mistake? A little thoughtlessness? Maybe. But this episode is representative of the way it is for me these days. Factoids I used to know, have known since I was four years old, escape me. My whole life I've known that Jack is the white cheese, the one I like. But on Sunday at Del Taco I didn't know this anymore. You can bet I know it now, but I had to relearn it, unfortunately with a little emotional trauma thrown in as reinforcement.

Since recovering from meningitis, my memory has been woefully slow to respond. Some things I never remember, no matter how long I dwell, and I finally have to ask. If I have nothing planned on a given day, nothing to look forward to or to mark the day as different than any other, I often don't know what day of the week it is. A few weeks ago I had to ask students four different times to tell me--it was Tuesday each time I asked but I just couldn't remember. Steve will often have to recount an entire conversation before I will remember that we even had it. Almost nothing has survived from my hospitalization and very little from the weeks immediately preceding it. Even some long-term information, like minor characters and locations from novels I have taught ten times, seems to be gone.

More than that, my attention span is about four minutes long. Even though I started a lovely book (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire's take on the Cinderella tale), I've pretty much given up on it. After reading for about ten minutes, I can no longer remember what I read earlier. And if I put the book down for a day or two? Forget about it! I have no notion of who these characters are, what their relationship is to each other, and why I should care. And my hunch is that this is a really good book. Believe me, I've read plenty of books where all of that was the author's fault!

Apparently this is normal. Meningitis is ferocious; it is a brain disease that mercilessly attacks neurons in all areas of the brain, and the effects are manifested in a broad range of after-effects, memory loss and lack of concentration being the two most common. Fortunately, the concentration issues should resolve within six months to a year! Some of the memory lapses are temporary; others are permanent. As my doctor explained, I will have to undergo relearning for much of the information I once knew and have since forgotten.

On a cognitive level, I am alright with this. I can learn. I'm actually pretty good at it and even like to do it. But to know that I am relearning, that I knew this once and that instead of learning new, interesting tidbits, I'm filling in blanks, is a little depressing. In addition, I honestly feel a little bit of what it might be like to have a learning disability. I know for a fact that if I were in school right now, sitting in a graduate level literature seminar as I have been most evenings for the past year, I simply could not do the work. I couldn't possibly read with the level of comprehension necessary, and I'm not sure I would be able to recall the literary tools I once had at my fingertips in order to complete the analysis of literature that was once second-nature to me.

I am promised that this will improve, that I should return to a similar level of functioning as I had before I got sick. However, I am also promised that both the memory loss and lack of concentration will first get worse. One of the results of brain surgery is, of course, that the brain is exposed to air. As a prominent neurosurgeon explains in his book, "You ain't never the same when the air hits your brain. Yes, the good Lord bricked that sucker in pretty good, and for a reason. We're not supposed to play with it" (Vertosick 22). And so even if the surgery is a smashing success, there will be at least subtle side-effects that, similar to those accompanying meningitis, will most likely resolve over the first one to two years post surgery.

This deficit is humbling. Putting my brain to work always came pretty easily, and now it doesn't. So how do I cope? Well, on good days, I enjoy the freedom of watching a Yankees game knowing I have absolutely nothing else to do. I am cooking again and enjoying it (but only buying white cheese). I read guilt-free. If a story is too hard, or not engaging enough, I don't finish it and don't sweat it. On the bad days, I feel depressed that my master's plan has been pushed back. I worry that I won't be ready to manage my workload when school resumes in September. I cry that what once was easy for me is now really hard work. Too hard, so that I don't even want to try. I miss books.

But this too is part of God's molding of me. I understand a certain population of students in a new way that will increase my compassion for them. That's good. When I am back to my old self, I will not be able to take my strengths for granted. That's good, too. And if I don't get back to my old self, if some things remain too hard for me, I will find new ways to learn and grow and find fulfillment in my life. That seems especially good.