About trauma.  Are there levels of trauma that set a foundation and draw up blueprint designs consisting of levels of reactions and experiences for other traumas to set their footings upon?   I’m curious if the original and first trauma decides how a reaction to another will unfold?  Is that first initial trauma experience the one on which all subsequent traumas depend?   Or, do they take on a personality of their own?  Is a trauma reaction the same every time or does an “experienced” trauma survivor develop specific mechanisms within it’s very self that the old experience is able to teach the new experience the ropes?   Kind of like the connection I made when I heard my friend Michele Rosenthal on her radio show “Change you Choose” mention a “Big T”(Trauma) and “little t”(trauma).  I’m curious, is the Big T like a Big Sister or Brother to the little t? 

            But what about those feelings, those initial, oh crap, here we go again feelings:  Those feelings when a diagnosis is discussed, feelings about what course of action to take, and feeling the changes it opens in your life.  I’m curious if those feelings are not lessons Big T experiences provide because, to me, it feels the same and all too familiar.  As is the noise.

            Having just recently been diagnosed with complex partial seizures developed secondary to my brain surgery experience almost three years ago, I’m curious about all this and more.  My curiosity peaked yesterday when I called my son to drive me to urgent care because of a severe reaction I was having to a newly introduced seizure medication.  Lesson one, or Big T – oh yea, that antibiotic gentamicin experience….  I’m curious how that old experience shaped this new one.  Let’s see;  fear, anxiety, racing thoughts, am I going to die, is this how’s it’s going to be now, great, more needles, shots, pokes and prods; stop that medication, start a new one… now what, and, why.

            I’m curious, how courage finds its way to us, how strength and resilience shows up just in the nick of time, how gratitude shapes optimism, and how it is that I seem to be able to just keep swimming.  Is it that I know a shore line is right beside me or that on my other side there is a vast ocean of yet to be discovered possibilities? 

            I’m curious, about that “why” question.  I’ve asked it every time, and again yesterday with the obvious reason why being; I was taking a medication of which I developed a significant allergic reaction.  Next why:  I was taking that medication because I have complex partial seizures which need to be controlled and that medication is one of many that can help with that.  Next why:  I am having seizures.  Next why:  I had brain surgery which increased the risk of developing seizures.  Next why:  I had brain surgery because I had a dangerous, nearly exploded aneurysm on my brain.  Next why:  Why?  Oh Oh, stuck here for answers…. Hmmmm…  I’m curious what, if anything I’ll find wandering around in this neck of the why woods….  Oh yea… there are no answers or path through the woods that get to a why.  It is what it is, move along back to the place which I am at this very moment and as I gaze upon my other side towards the vast ocean of endless possibility, I ask myself; why not. 

            I’m curious, what comes next….