19:49 I wanted to leave almost immediately I did not want to sit within the hospital so I got out as quickly as possible. I knew I had to go through recovery but I stayed in bed for about two days so I left the hospital the day after I got back to our home stayed for about two days of recovery and then the next six months I was regaining my communication capabilities and my ability to retrieve words so that was the biggest part for me is that it was very difficult for me to think of a story or be able to communicate. I was trying to describe things happening quickly. I would say that car moved quickly how quickly do you think they’re going that was very quick where otherwise I would try and use different adjectives synonyms – you know well that was fast or that was quick or that was swift so my communication was very very limited

20:59 I found if I was speaking extremely quickly I would lose pronouns where he’s become she’s or she’s become they or they becomes he’s and it was without rhyme or reason. One thing that is continual is where I think I’m still going through recovery I can’t remember the words of songs as they’re coming through. So we were at a friend’s birthday and people were singing happy birthday, a song that I’ve probably heard a thousand times

at this point

21:47 I was not able to retrieve the words fast enough to actually sing the song

22:26 The doctors said that they thought they got a full resection which would be a full removal of the tumor and any parts that would be remaining within the section of my brain

23:00 They did say that it would be six months to a year before I would be fully recovered. They said six weeks until I felt good enough to really be competent at what I previously was doing so to work or you know activities back home

23:20 So I did experience similar time frames that they offered me

24:24 My job was very very accommodating. For a month and a half afterwards there were times that my brain just got very tired and that was due to you know the inflammation and some of the damage that that had occurred. It was drilling and stripping parts of my gray matter in order to remove this this tumor so it was definitely swelling so my brain was definitely going through recovery and I was using that a little bit as a marker for my recovery is how did work feel like this week how did it feel the week after and the week after so that was where I am at. So I’ve been successfully in my opinion working well for probably five months now after that surgery

26:05 The first week after the surgery when I was trying to work, I probably worked four to five hours that week and what I found was it took me hours to write emails or to respond to somebody where I would see something that I needed to respond provide input on and I would try and write an email and it would take me an hour, take me two hours and I would respond I would stop I would look at it and I could just tell my brain was saying this is too much take a minute just sign off for today and so that was kind of my indication where after I had done work for a couple of hours I would notice that all of my processes or processing within my brain would just stop down and it would say go take a nap you’re done here this is this is too much and that’s basically my indication that was a good baseline of the next few weeks where I would know if I noticed my processes were slowing I would start stopping and I would either cancel or move meetings and I would say I’m not going to be able to add my best here and I’m not going to be able to provide any value to any of these conversations so I’m going to take the time and give myself some time to really develop it and recover here so back to the in office so I didn’t go back into the office for probably three months afterwards. I did have this giant scar on my head and when I did go back I wasn’t able to get a haircut because it was still sensitive it was still so I basically wore hats for still wearing one for about four or five months after the surgery I did get a haircut eventually but just started getting used to wearing a hat because I didn’t want to have this goofy haircut going into to the office so work from home make makes it a bit easier because you know I guess folks will only see the front of your head right with the with the way the Zoom and certainly the hat helped when you did make it back into the office

28:24 Did everyone kind of know that that’s why you were wearing a hat is that sort of it became a non-issue or were there conversations that occurred because of it? I think I probably let 10 people in my company that I had surgery now having said that I did inform everyone recently as an announcement to the dinner that we’re hosting in May and you know personally my thought behind that was I didn’t want people to treat me differently after it happened. I wanted to and especially as a new person or a new co-worker I wanted people to judge me based off of my capability and not to judge me based off of my disease

29:58 I think it’s important to communicate when you’re ready of course because there’s a large group of like experienced people out there