Most days on the acupuncture table, I try to relax and often, at least for a few minutes, drift off into a nap.

It took me a while to get so I could do that. Even to be ok with the needles going near my sternum or solar plexus or shoulder, the areas scarred from incisions.

Sometimes my heart seems to pound so loudly that it will rock me off the table. I've read comments from people who've had aortic dissections and say the same thing about their heart beat.

But today I lay on the table and felt activated. And calm. I felt alert and full of ideas. I made connections and had insights. I thought of titles for things without knowing what they were titles for. I thought of things I'd like to do.

It's not been like that for a while. I haven't had the energy. My brain couldn't go that far.

It's been months since I put together a blog. I can manage social media posts ok and my weekly newsletter, so I probably seem pretty good and fully recovered on paper. But things often drain me.

Movement can be a challenge. Either me moving or things around me moving. It's all relative motion, and the difference can be more than my brain can piece together.

Some days I feel like driving, my brain can put it all together, at least well enough. Some days I let Penny drive. Some days I don't even feel like being a passenger. I need to go into a dark room and rest, get out of the light. Decrease the noise.

So busy places, especially restaurants with a lot of people in flux and a lot of conversations and other sounds bouncing around, can overwhelm my capacity. My head freezes up. It's a form of motion sickness, really.

Sometimes walking in the woods is too much. Some days just looking at the woods is too much, with its broken light and layers of uncertainty and shadows. Some days sitting in the garden is too much. Loud sounds startle my system easily. It's like a cannonball into a swimming pool, splashing water everywhere, sloshing through my brain, back and forth with its reverberations down into my gut.

I went for a walk the other day when I was feeling good. A bicyclist came up from behind, announcing himself. It shook me the rest of the way home, damn it.

A lot of people with concussions or traumatic brain injuries are like that, I've read. Anybody, more generally, whose brain is low on fuel, who isn't getting or didn't get enough oxygen to fuel their brain processes and systems, like me and surgery, ECMO, etc.

But today, I felt fueled. That's what I mean by activation, I guess. Things opened up and became normal.

One thought I had was about emotions and energy and healing and regulation.

I was thinking about how when I couldn't regulate myself, when I needed assistance from doctors and nurses and CNAs and loved ones, especially in the early stages, I didn't have any big emotions. I didn't have the energy for them. I was like a computer that goes into safe mode and shuts down unnecessary programs that take too much power.

As my ability to regulate myself returned, to breathe on my own, to eat and process food, to talk, to listen to music, to eventually walk, if very slowly, my kidneys' ability to function, all that... my emotions were now there to help me regulate myself. I could feel joy and grief. I could feel anger and depression and sadness and envy, fear and panic and anxiety.

And that's the kind of thing I was thinking about on the acupuncture table today, needles across my torso, my brow and neck, my legs and ankles and feet. I remembered how the doctors would say, "Squeeze my hand." Or "Push your feet into my hands." And I'd try to give it what I had. "Follow my finger with your eyes." Or ask, "What year is it?" "What is your name?" "Where are you?"

I never had any doubts about who I was. I wasn't always sure about where I was, but that became more clear as time went on. It's still a challenge sometimes, though, with inner ear and balance issues. Sometimes things are less clear visually or I have moments of double vision, which scare the hell out of me.

But today the clouds parted and I thought about how we regulate our emotions or are encouraged to regulate them by the culture. The tough emotions in particular. But what if the emotions are how our system, our psyche, regulates itself, how we regulate ourselves? That's a whole new ball game. I've learned that emotions move us in relation to the environment and other people, in relation to our needs and desires, in relation to the past and the future. Emotions are the flow of your self.

I lay on the table feeling that idea and making plans and feeling like I could make plans. I didn't wonder if the clouds would return or if a kind of curtain would close, if only a thin veil over my consciousness. I felt myself bubbling up from the depths of my unconscious. I had something to say and the ability to say it.

I got off the table at the end of the session. As I prepared to leave, I turned on my phone and saw a post in a support group for aortic dissection survivors. I usually tiptoe around this group because it can set off stuff that sounds alarms for me. I rarely comment or get involved. Everybody has their own journey and set of life conditions and experiences.

But today I saw a picture someone had posted from their hospital bed, a series of selfies, with their incisions.

Most of the time I don't look at things like this. I don't, or couldn't, look at my own scars, either, for a long time. But today I looked at the pictures and saw how they mirrored mine – her sternum incision, her incisions for the chest tubes. I read what she wrote. Her anger and frustration. I told her, you are tough as hell. The fact that you wrote this post is proof. I told her to hang in there.

Her anger and frustration and sadness and fear, I realized, were all expressions of her life force and she was channeling it as best as she could.

I drove home, thinking how I might put this into words. Today, I could handle the road, the movements around me and the movements within me. The light didn't bother me. The shadows didn't bother me. The motion didn't make me sick. A dump truck came up behind me at an intersection and blew its horn because I wouldn't run the red light ahead of us. I watched it approach in my rearview mirror. I somehow knew the driver would stop and I didn't feel overly angry or panicked. He left some space between us. He knew I was there because I knew I was there.

I wrote a poem. I spoke it into my phone.

I sat down and pulled up this blog on my computer. I started typing and kept typing and Penny said, "Are you writing a book?" And I said, "That's a good question." For the first time in a long time, I had the energy to ask myself that.

Today, I look forward to the future. I have a couple ideas...again. I will take a nap this afternoon in a cool, quiet room and take up these matters of body, mind, and soul. I will do what it takes to replenish my energy, to move forward, to put one foot in from of the other, even if I occasionally trip myself, or have to pause or backtrack. Today was another good day. May they accumulate for all of us.