I had brain surgery back in late May. No, it’s not why I haven’t posted since April. That’s because I’m lazy.

I had what’s called a hemifacial spasm. Basically there’s a nerve in your brain that controls one half of your face. It was rubbing up against a blood vessel. Whenever it happened, my face would twitch. Sometimes it was my eye, sometimes my mouth, sometimes both, just … annoying.

I had this condition for years. Probably about 5. Before they would just treat it with Botox injections. This required going to see my neurologist four times a year. And having needles stuck into my face. Including my eyelid. That was the worst. But the Botox was over in a matter of minutes, and I was somewhat good to go for another three months.

Eventually my doctor pointed out that well, I have to do this for the rest of my life. And that as I got older, one side of my face would start to look different than the other.

In case you’re curious, this is probably not a stuttering story. It’s just a story about me and what I went through this year.

I guess as far as stuttering is concerned, I never felt afraid to ask my neurosurgeon any questions. Although with something like this, I did read up heavily on it beforehand, so I knew what he’d say.

I had the surgery at Johns Hopkins. I live on the East Coast, and my surgeon has done hundreds of these before.

Of course I did make a joke about fixing my stuttering. Well, when I woke up, it wasn’t “fixed,” so, ha, ha. I still stutter.

My family came to support me during the surgery which was great. I also had several friends come by. I will say that the old me would have relied more on me telling my family (quietly) if I had a problem with the care. I’m at the point now where I’m comfortable speaking directly to the nurses, doctors or whoever comes into the room checking up on me. And there were questions every day — what should I do or not do, can I go for a walk, where’d that doctor go, who are you, can you turn off that computer screen so I can sleep, and so on.

Another thing that helped me reduce stress during this whole ordeal was going through FMLA with work. I completely disconnected for over a month. No calls, no e-mails, no texts. And I had to keep telling myself, look, they’re fine, just focus on taking it easy and getting better. Completely better. Having those feelings wash over me indirectly helped my speech, I’m sure.