Back in hotel at 11:30 am after my MIRP in Tampa this March, thought I'd need to sleep after the stress of the days following my self-diagnosis, and Jim's confirmation of that, and the anxiety I felt anticipating my procedure, and the previous day's flight from Hartford, and my 5:15 am check-in at TGH.

HA! Put my head down, tried to fall asleep, and after about 10 minutes a light went off in my head. I was in FLORIDA, in MARCH, and back home in Connecticut it was gray and 35 degrees.... while outside my window it was blue sky and 72....hmm. And I felt, well, good (a feeling I had all but forgotten was possible).

So I got up, went out into the noon day bustle of Tampa, had the best cheesburger of my life, looked around myself to get my bearings, and took a looooooong walk down the riverwalk.  Stopped at an open air bar and had a (rare for me) mid-day beer for "desert" and chatted up the pretty young bar maid (just for for the inspiration and conviviality... jeez she was granddaughter material!). I strolled another couple of miles,  jumped on the streeetcar back to the Mariott.  It was the longest walk and most socializing that I had managed in the last 5 years.  And then I went out again after nightfall, and wound up explaining to a friendly bartender what the bandaid-on-the-neck-mysteriously-smiling people he routinely would serve had just experienced.

Back home in CT the next day, my insomnia (the worst of my many many symptoms) was simply GONE. I sleep the night through again (well, I AM 65 and do trot to the john once, but that damnable seeing the clock every hour was just gone...and stays gone).

My appetite seemed to suddenly reappear (I had been eating as if by rote... knowing I should, but not really wanting to for a long time). I am working hard to not overdo it now.... I actually eat "lunch" AND dinner.

And over the next few days and weeks (and it is still continuing now that I am 5 months post op) it became true that "the sky was bluer".  A overarching sense of mental clarity (a state of mind as hard to describe as the feelings of malaise and general lousiness that was one of my pre-diagnosis symptoms) has returned.

As do many of Jim Norman's patients, I am "giving my testimony" to any and all who will listen (and it is amazing how many do listen with rapt attention and seek more info), and to a person they react with  joy at my life changing CURE, and moreover to a person tell me something like, "Yes, we can see it in you".

Perhaps the only downside (I am being facetious here, folks) is that with my vastly improved mental function, and a reinvigorated body in which that mind resides,  I realize I have been given MANY more years with which to DO SOMETHING with my newly granted lease on life.  And that is a burden I willingly bear.