February 01, 2025

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I SURVIVED !

Here's a little-known but disturbing fact: According to the Brain Aneu-rysm Foundation, about 50 per cent of people who have ruptured brain aneurysms die, and 66 per cent of the survivors have major cognitive deficiencies from brain damage. Luckily, it is extremely rare for aneurysms to rupture--only 1 in 100 do. Unfortunately for me, mine didWhat happened? A decade ago, when I was 59, I woke up at our cottage on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, Canada, had a shower, made tea and got back into bed. Nestled in my happy place next to my sleeping husband, I read magazines and made notes for some travel writing I was doing. Suddenly, I felt a severe jolt of intense pain in my head. That was the last thing I remember before I lost consciousness. My husband woke beside me as I made "weird noises," as he said later. He tried to rouse me with no luck and called 911By the time I arrived at our small local hospital, I had regained consciousness. I was seen by a resident, who consulted her supervisor. After a few hours of routine tests, she told me I'd had a "migraine," and I was discharged with instructions to return in 48 hours if there was no changeThere was no change. And after a day and a half of agonizing pain, I told my husband, "Something is really wrong with my head." I didn't care that we hadn't waited the prescribed 48 hours; in order for me to be taken seriously and not fobbed off as a migraine victim, we returned to the hospitalI was seen by a different doctor and got a CT scan. It showed dark residue below my brain, which was the iron from the haemoglobin of the blood that had leaked to that spot. I'd had an aneurysm, and it had burst. This was beyond my doctor's scope of care. "We need to get you to a hospital specializing in neurology," he saidI was medevaced to a new hospital, where a neurosurgeon explained that they needed to stop the bleeding in a small vessel at the front of my brain. He would go in through my groin and pass a thin tube through my arteries and up into my head. If that didn't stop the bleeding, he would do "windowpane surgery," drilling a hole in my head"No, absolutely not! No one is drilling a hole in my head," I insisted. I then turned to my husband and my brother, who had joined us: "If things go wrong and it looks like I'm going to be a vegetable, DO NOT go to any extraordinary measures to keep me alive." My brother said, "You are going to be absolutely fine."

THE GREAT WILDEBEEST MIGRATION

It starts like a scene from Out of Africa. Leaving Mount Kilimanjaro behind, the bush plane flies over the gaping Ngorongoro Crater, casting its shadow over tawny land that resembles lion skins sewn together with the rivers' green threadWe're in the Serengeti in Tanzania, in the northern part of the national park, near the Kenyan border. We've yet to set foot on the ground, but the safari is underway. Herds of elephants bathe in the Mara River. Halfsubmerged crocodiles come into sight, and on the bank sit masses darker than boulders, the hippopotamusesIt's all wonderful, but we're here to see something else: the blue wildebeest. With its spindly legs, grey-blue coat, wild mane and a long, bumpy face that gives it a stubborn air, this ruminant is not the elite of the African safariWildebeests live in herds of about 30 that assemble in huge numbers during the great annual migration"The cycle starts early in the year in the southern Serengeti and moves west, then north to the Masai Mara (Kenya), east and back south," explains our guide, Erasto Macha. "Wildebeests follow the rain, which provides green grasslands. They remain in the northern Serengeti from July to early October, but August and September are when we see the most." He estimates there are 1.5 million hereIf it weren't for the Mara, which is subject to massive fluctuations depending on rainfall upriver, their migration would be smooth sailing. Rising on the Kenyan side of the Great Rift Valley and flowing into Lake Victoria, it's the longest and only perennial river in the Serengeti. It's also the most dangerous to crossTHE LAND CRUISER we're travelling in crosses an acacia savannah, and there's a parade of animals: elephants, giraffes, warthogs, buffaloes, ostriches, antelopes and topis. Crocodiles and hippopotamuses soak in the water as vultures fly overhead. All of the actors are in place: On the opposite bank, a black line forms at a spot at the river's edge, and the growing horde congregatesThe wildebeests are about to cross, but they seem to hesitate. And who could blame them? The waters are crawling with crocs and hippos. When one wildebeest makes its move, the entire group follows. "Their best strategy is to cross in a line rather than head-on," Macha says. "In a compact group, the young wildebeests would inevitably end up crushed and then drown." Several hundred thousand zebras follow them, he says, but the more cautious zebras never cross first. "One theory is they remember dangerous places. But what we do know is they share the grass: zebras graze the top of the grass and wildebeests eat the rest." The group at the edge of the Mara still hesitates. Will they or won't they? We place our bets. The wait can take hours. Sometimes, the wildebeests turn