Not Dead Yet

Trigeminal Neuralgia, Brain Surgery, and the Slow Down

Last winter I went from building driveways and clearing trees to neurologists, MRIs, brain surgery, and learning how much pain a person can live with.
This is the reason the website went quiet for a while.
This is also the reason Bigfoot Trails Basecamp means more to me now than it ever did before.

On November 14, 2025, I got a migraine that changed everything.

Not a normal migraine. Not a “take some ibuprofen and go to bed” migraine. This was the kind that shuts your world down. After four days straight of it, I finally went to the emergency room. They gave me the migraine cocktail, and for about a day I felt human again. Then the pain came back.

A few days later I went to urgent care. The doctor there looked concerned and said he thought it might be trigeminal neuralgia and ordered an MRI.

I didn’t know at the time that MRI was about to change the next 6 months of my life.

A couple days after the MRI, the results showed up online. I was reading them when my phone rang. Neurology. They wanted to see me immediately. I hung up, then the neurosurgeon’s office called. Appointment scheduled. A few hours later, Oncology called.

That was the phone call that made my stomach drop.

I didn’t know what they found yet, but when Oncology calls you out of nowhere, your brain goes to places you never want it to go.

The News

The urgent care doctor was right. Trigeminal neuralgia on the right side. That explained the migraines and the electric shock pain in my face. Pain so bad that kidney stones felt like a paper cut in comparison.

But that wasn’t the real news.

They also found a mass on the left side of my brain. A tumor.

So in about two weeks, I went from having a bad migraine to meeting with neurologists, neurosurgeons, oncology, and scheduling brain surgery.

Life can change real fast.

Brain Surgery

We decided to do surgery to relieve the trigeminal neuralgia and monitor the tumor with MRIs every few months. Surgery got scheduled just after the New Year.

So while everyone else was celebrating a new year, I was getting ready for brain surgery.

Before the surgery, I had to come to terms with something. There was a chance I might not wake up. I didn’t want to die, but I had to accept that it was a possibility. We got paperwork in order, had hard conversations, and I went into surgery at peace with whatever happened.

I woke up.

From what I was told, the surgery went well. But later that same day, I was in the worst pain I had ever felt. They rushed me in for a CT scan and found an air pocket causing pressure in my head. Once they fixed that, things improved.

I owe a lot to the hospital staff that took care of me. Pain like that changes you, and apparently I wasn’t very pleasant to a couple nurses. Pain and anesthesia don’t bring out the best in a person. I apologized later, and I meant it.

I thought the hard part was over.

It wasn’t.

After Surgery

About a month after surgery, things started getting worse again. Slowly at first. Then more and more.

The electric shock pain was mostly gone, but now it was constant pressure, stabbing pain, and something I didn’t expect — my nervous system felt like it was stuck on maximum overload.

Light was too bright.
Noise was too loud.
Movement was too fast.
Crowds were unbearable.

Some days I stay in a dark room with blackout curtains because it’s the only place my brain feels calm. Some days I can go outside and work on the property for a few hours. But if I push too hard, I pay for it for days afterward.

I don’t really drive anymore. One time I almost crashed because a pain episode hit out of nowhere.

Life changed in ways I didn’t expect.

The Day That Scared Me

There was one day that scared me more than the surgery, more than the tumor, more than anything else so far.

I need to be very clear about this part.
I am not suicidal. I have seen suicide up close. I have seen what it does to families and friends, and I would never do that to the people I love.

But one day, during a really bad pain and overload episode, I understood something I never understood before.

I understood why someone would want the pain to stop so badly that they would do anything to make it stop.

It wasn’t about wanting to die.
It was about wanting relief.
Just relief.

That realization scared me more than anything else in this entire journey.

And the only thing that pulled me out of that mental place was thinking about my wife, my kids, my grandkids, and my parents. What it would do to them. What it would leave behind.

That was the moment I realized I’m not fighting this just for me anymore. I’m fighting it for them.

Nervous System Overload

The best way I can describe what my brain feels like now is nervous system overload.

A friend of mine once told me a story about getting out of prison after 13 years. He said the hardest part wasn’t being locked up — it was coming back to the outside world. The colors were too bright. The noise was too loud. People moved too fast. Everything felt chaotic and overwhelming.

I thought I understood that story when he told me.

Then one day my wife and I went to Kaiser to pick up prescriptions and do lab work. The place was packed. People everywhere, phones ringing, machines beeping, bright lights, people walking fast, talking loud.

All of a sudden my brain just couldn’t handle it. Pain started building, anxiety spiked, everything felt like it was closing in. I told my wife we had to leave, and I walked out immediately.

I finally understood what my friend meant.

When your nervous system is overloaded, the world feels like too much. Too loud, too bright, too fast, too chaotic. And all you want is quiet and calm.

That’s why the property means so much to me now. Out here, it’s quiet. Trees, dirt, wind, machines, projects. My brain can handle that. The world makes sense out here.

The Waiting Game

Right now I’m in the waiting phase again. Waiting for neurology appointments. Trying medications. Trying to manage pain. Living life more hour by hour than day by day.

I can’t plan much anymore. Some days are decent. Some days are gone before they even start.

But this is also why the website went live and then went quiet for a while. It wasn’t because I lost interest or changed direction. It was because for a while, I was just trying to get through each day.

This whole thing slowed me down. A lot.

But it didn’t stop me.

Bigfoot Trails Basecamp might move slower than I planned. The driveway might take longer. Projects might take longer. Articles might come out slower.

But I’m still here.
I’m still building.
I’m still moving forward.

Just slower than I expected.

I don’t know what the next few years are going to look like with all of this. I don’t know how the tumor will play out, or if the nerve pain will ever fully go away. What I do know is this: we’re going to keep building this place, keep working the land, keep racing, keep making things, and keep spending time with family. Maybe slower than I planned, maybe different than I planned, but we’re not stopping.

Not dead yet. Not even close.