There's a strange sort of disconnect that comes with living with a lifelong medical condition. Not because the condition itself is strange — though hydrocephalus certainly has its moments — but because your relationship with it often bears very little resemblance to how other people perceive it.
For most people, "brain surgery" is one of those phrases that lands with a considerable thud. It sounds dramatic, frightening, and, frankly, a bit surreal. Which is entirely fair. Neurosurgery is, by any reasonable standard, a serious affair. It's not exactly the sort of thing one casually pencilled into the calendar between "buy milk" and "reply to emails."
And yet, for me, it occupies a rather different place. This was my fourth shunt revision in twenty years. At this point, it's less an unimaginable crisis and more a particularly unwelcome form of routine maintenance. Not pleasant, certainly. Not trivial. But familiar. Deeply, frustratingly familiar.
That familiarity changes the emotional texture of the experience. I know perfectly well that what I've just been through is significant. I am aware, on an intellectual level, that disappearing for a week to have brain surgery is not considered normal behaviour. But emotionally, it doesn't always register as extraordinary. It feels less like a dramatic interruption and more like an inconvenient, if occasionally urgent, system update. I just feel numb to it.
Which is why the outpouring of support can sometimes feel a little disorienting.
Please don't misunderstand me — I am immensely grateful. The kindness people have shown me has been genuinely touching, and I don't take it for granted. But there is often a small part of me that feels faintly puzzled by it all. Not unappreciative, just... bemused. As though everyone else is reacting to an event that, from my perspective, is simply another chapter in a story I've been living since infancy.
I think that's the thing about normal. It isn't necessarily easy, or pleasant, or fair. But once you've lived with something long enough, it stops feeling remarkable. It just becomes part of the landscape. Something woven so thoroughly into the fabric of your life that you barely notice its shape anymore.
Other people see brain surgery. I see maintenance.
Neither perspective is wrong. They're simply looking from different vantage points. For someone on the outside, it's an extraordinary event. For me, it's Friday. Admittedly, a rather rubbish Friday involving anaesthesia and a hospital gown, but Friday nonetheless.
And perhaps that's why support can sometimes feel oddly unearned. I haven't done anything heroic. I haven't climbed a mountain or achieved some grand victory. I've simply dealt with the latest consequence of a condition I've had since the beginning. I handled what needed handling, because there wasn't really another option.
But maybe that's not the point. Maybe care isn't something that needs to be earned through exceptional circumstances or acts of bravery. Maybe it's simply what people offer when someone they care about is having a difficult time.
I'm still adjusting to that idea. But I think I'm beginning to understand it.