Life can be such a strange beast. Our life journey generally operates on auto-pilot and we rarely thinking about nasty things happening to us.

I have always had migraine headaches. They began in my teens and always with full bells and whistles. By this I mean migraine with aura – visual problems in the form of wavy lines and flashing lights in my vision along with arm and face numbness.

In October last year, I had a slightly different experience – I lost the vision of one eye completely for a short time. My doctor sent me for an MRI, thinking it may have been a TIA (Transient Ischaemic Attack).

It wasn’t. I had instead a 7mm unruptured cerebral aneurysm in my basilar tip artery.

Appointments with a neurosurgeon and neuro-radiologist followed and a plan of action was agreed upon to deal with this unwanted and uninvited visitor.

This ‘guest’ in my brain required coiling and stenting.

So, in November I underwent four hours of surgery and awoke in ICU unable to move and, not unsurprisingly, in a bit of pain.

The overwhelming sense of fatigue was lessening by the beginning of the new year. I was busy with my designing and knitting, walking most days again and spending time with all the special people in my life – in short: getting on with the business of living.

With arrival of April, this has changed a little. My migraines, which had disappeared after surgery, are back. In the past few weeks there has not been many days when either a migraine has struck or I am getting over the after-effects of one.

While my frustration levels are high with not much knitting or designing happening at the moment there is also a real sense of concern. It is perhaps fortuitous my six-month check-up is due and an MRI is scheduled.  Hopefully, nothing else is going on in this silly head of mine.

This huge curve-ball has changed my outlook on many things. Not the least is mortality itself. While I try not to think about it too seriously, a health scare certainly makes you focus on what is important and what isn’t in the time you have left on this planet.

Carpe diem