| Cougar Press PO Box 894 Meadview AZ 86444 |
| Brain Damage |
My surgeon was a swell fellow. I asked him if I could be allowed to stay awake during the
operation that would be happening inside of my skull. I wanted to have a subjective experience
of the procedure. I figured that, so long as I had local anaesthesia in the area of the incision,
there would be no problem.
It would be a problem for him, he replied, and so I was unconscious for the whole procedure,
which was probably just as well. Who really wants to be awake while people cut your throat and
take drills, hammers, chisels and scalpels to your head, eh?
The steps had been explained to me. The anesthesiologist had told me in person that he would
be present during the whole event, monitoring me and the chemical levels that would be keeping
me in dreamland.
An incision was made in the left side of my neck to expose the carotid artery. This was then set
up so that it could be immediately clamped off in case the surgeon were to accidentally nick the
anterior cerebral artery. I could, he told me, bleed to death in four seconds should that happen.
By the time this step was being taken, I was already out.
I had been awake while they shaved my head. I was to be a skinhead for awhile, but that was
better than being dead. Once I was unconscious, and other preparations had been made, they
made three cuts on the left side of my head and peeled back the skin like a door or a shutter.
Then, at the corners of the two-inch square, they drilled through my skull. With sharp chisels
they cut out the square of bone and removed it. Wouldn't it have been fun to be awake for that?
Because of the tangle of arteries inside of the tumor, the surgeon had to carefully whittle away
the unwanted tissue. When I saw him a day or so after I had awakened from the anaesthetic, he
told me that he had been able to remove eighty percent of the meningioma.
To say that I was groggy following the surgery would be something of an understatement. In
fact, that last sentence is an understatement. For many weeks I was tired, sleepy, slow, unsteady,
bleary, dazed, weak, shaky, wobbly, woozy, faint, dizzy and muzzy. I was unable to think
clearly. Large sections of my long-term memory were gone.
I don't know how long I remained in the Veteran's Hospital. I'm guessing that it was a couple of
weeks. My cranium was still in bandages when I went home. The operation had been performed
at the start of October. By November I was well enough to begin receiving radiation therapy at a
center down in Hillcrest, a neighborhood in San Diego. For the first few weeks, my wife would
take me there and wait.
The procedure only took a few minutes. It was painless, but the effect on my mood was
profound. It was always early in the morning. I would wake up feeling okay. We would drive to
San Diego from our home on the outskirts of El Cajon. We lived in a little valley called Rios
Canyon. My wife and our children would stay in the waiting room, or sometimes they would just
sit in the car.
The actual blast of gamma rays only lasted for a few seconds. When I emerged and rejoined my
family, I was no fun for anyone. All that I wanted to do was sleep.
After a couple of weeks of this, I elected to start making the trip on my own. I could see no
reason to subject the ones I loved to the bother of getting up early, making the long drive to
Hillcrest, waiting and then returning with a somnolent dummy strapped into the passenger seat.
I have always been an early riser, and, as I mentioned earlier, I would wake up on the days when
I had an appointment at the oncology clinic feeling quite chipper, all things considered. I would
kiss my sleepyheads goodbye, and then I would walk down the road through the valley at dawn,
hearing the birds sing and rejoicing in life with all of its colors, sounds and fragrances. I would
catch a bus to the train station in El Cajon, transfer there and ride the train to downtown San
Diego, and then take another bus up to the therapy center.
Coming home was different. It was still bus, train, bus, but on each of these rides I would be
asleep as soon as I sat down. I remember how, at a stop where I would get off the train and have
to wait for half an hour for the bus, I would just curl up on the sidewalk, in a patch of Autumn
sunlight, and go to sleep. After the last ride, I would walk up the valley in a daze, and once I got
home I would go to bed. This routine went on, three times a week, until just before Christmas.
By then my hair was starting to grow back.
I remember how my head would get to itching during this phase of my recovery. The
combination of the healing wound and the short new hair would sometimes drive me into fits of
scratching. I found that sometimes it felt really good to kneel down and rub my head back and
forth on the carpet. I was afraid that I would rub a bald spot into my noggin or disturb the fresh
scar, but it felt so good that I would have trouble stopping. I'm sure I looked like an idiot, but I
didn't care. I probably didn't look too bright curled up like a cat in the sunshine down on that
sidewalk, waiting for the bus, but I didn't care about that either.
I didn't really care about anything beyond my personal comfort at the moment. My memory
was shot. Here's a list of things that I could no longer remember: relatives, friends, past events,
plans for the future, my trade, my livelihood, my dreams, language... Everything was right now.
If my head itched, that was all there was.
I was clumsy, and that is putting it mildly. While walking through a doorway in our home, I
would frequently and unexpectedly slam my shoulder into the jamb. My shoulders were bruised
and sore, but still it would happen again and again. Or I would trip over things in my way, toys,
laundry baskets, packs, chairs, cushions. I wasn't blind, but I acted like I was.
I got very weak during this period of recuperation. We lived near a school, and before the
operation I had been accustomed to using the bars in the school yard to do my chin-ups and
dips. When, I finally got around to getting up there and trying to work out a little, I could
barely do any repetitions at all. I had been used to knocking off eighteen to twenty chin-ups.
Now I could only do four. Worse, pretty soon I could only do three, then two, then one. The
next thing I knew, I couldn't chin myself even one time. I would hang from the bar like a sack of
wet laundry. My muscles were atrophying.
I never realized how much flesh we have nestled in our temples until the one on the left side of
my head disappeared due to atrophy. The entry point during the operation had been just back
of the temple; I can still feel the outlines in my skull, like a poorly fitted panel. But the area of
the temple is, and has remained, hollow. How does one exercise his temple?
I rode public transit, trains and buses, a lot during those first couple of years. Several times I
met other survivors of brain surgery, and we would recognize one another by our hollow temples.
When my EEG came back positive, my California drivers license was automatically suspended.
Nobody told me about this rule, and I continued to drive until the day of the CAT scan. After
that I didn't pilot an automobile for some time. I couldn't even walk in a straight line. It was
quite a while before I felt capable of reapplying for my driver's license. I had to have a letter
from my doctor certifying that I had been free of seizures for six months or a year. I don't
remember which.
What I do remember is that I passed the driving test with flying colors. I wasn't sure if I could
still drive, but my body was.
I endured a lot of pain in my body due to atrophy. The atrophy was due to physical inactivity,
which in turn was due to the confusion and exhaustion that followed the brain surgery. I had
forgotten a lot of things. I had to relearn the routines of daily life. Bathing and grooming were
very difficult for a long time. My head was too sensitive for brushing or combing, but
fortunately the hair was too short to need it. I was afraid to get wet. Any physical sensations
bordered on too much. When I came out of the bathtub I would nearly freeze to death before I
could get dry and clothed. Showers were out of the question. All of those little drops of water
hitting my skin everywhere was too much to take. Brushing my teeth was too much to take.
My libido was in shambles. I couldn't have engaged in sex had I wanted to, and I didn't want to.
I couldn't even sleep with my wife because of convulsions in my arms and legs due to pain and
random neural output. I slept on the floor out in the living room, where I could thrash about
without hurting anyone.
My wife was an angel through the operation and the first few months of recovery. It all became
too much for her, however, and eventually she asked me to leave. Eventually she demanded that
I get out. When I finally acceded to her wishes, eight months after the operation, I was still weak
and disoriented. She wanted to drive me to the home of my brother, my sister or my father, but
I was having none of that. I couldn't drive, but I could walk. I loaded my backpack, and I
walked away.
As the reader may well imagine, this whole episode was a turning point in my life. I was
forty-four years old. I had gone from being a householder, a worker, a husband, a father, an
electrician, a productive member of society, to being a homeless drifter. I could say that the
results of my medical condition included the loss of my wife, my children, my home, my cars and
my occupation. I could also say, with equal honesty, that I had never been happier.
That night I camped in a place that I knew of, an ancient abandoned homestead out in the hills
with old pepper trees, rattlesnakes and remnants of rocky foundations. I was reminded of the
stages of life in ancient India. The baby would become a child; the child would grow to be a
student; the student would learn to be a worker; the worker would marry and become a
householder and a parent. As old age approached, the time would come, for one who followed
this tradition, when everything would be left behind. Free of the trammels of family and
possessions, the person would become a wandering mendicant, a homeless vagrant, a beggar, a
vagabond, a penniless drifter wandering through the land, a burden to no one, eating meals in
the temple at the end of a beautiful day, lost in serenity, praising God.
The people of the far north, the Inuit and the Yup'ik, are reputed to have had the tradition of
abandoning aged members of the tribe on an ice floe. Research suggests that this was a practice
that was indeed followed, but only in times of extreme famine and hardship. When the old one
became such a burden to the band that it threatened the survival and quality of life for the
younger members, he or she might request that they be left behind.
Words like senilicide and invalidicide do not roll off the tongue in modern society. Every
civilization has had its traditions for dealing with the old and the sick. These days we have
hospitals and hospices. The terms assisted suicide, euthanasia, withdrawal of life support and
"pulling the plug" are in common parlance.
As for myself, slogging slowly into the mountains with my bedroll, water bottle and tent, I felt
like I was in both categories: old and sick. But, though I wasn't getting any younger, I was
getting better. My memory was returning bit by bit. A typical instance would be when someone
would mention a name, a place or something that had happened in the past. I would admit that
I had no idea whom or what they were talking about. This always prompted incredulous
expressions. It was hard for them to believe that I could not recall a cousin or an aunt, a family
home or a vacation. Whoever I was talking to, brother, sister, friend, might continue to offer
hints about the hidden subject until suddenly the clouds of amnesia would part and I did
remember.
I found it to be exciting, especially because when it would happen it wouldn't be just the one
thing that popped back into my conscious awareness. Whole chains of people, places and events
would come tumbling back into place. Eventually it became much less frequent, which told me
that I had probably regained most of my long-term memory. (Now that I am in my 60s, it is my
short-term memory that can be a problem, but this is due not to brain damage so much as to
age.)
I spent days walking, arriving first at my sister's home out in the remote valley where she lived
with her brood. I stayed there for a few days, and then I continued to walk higher into the
mountains.
Over the next few years I stayed at the homes of friends and relatives in the mountains and at
the beaches of California, as well as in Nevada, Oregon, Florida and Canada. As I became
capable again, I would try to be of service. House-sitting, pet-sitting, watching over horses or
children, repair work, moving... all of these were ways that I endeavored to be useful. I traveled
a lot, by train, bus and plane. I visited old friends and relations. I learned that I could still use
tools. I helped folks with their electrical and plumbing problems. I gardened. I wrote. And one
precious day, I don't remember when, I rediscovered Yoga.
operation that would be happening inside of my skull. I wanted to have a subjective experience
of the procedure. I figured that, so long as I had local anaesthesia in the area of the incision,
there would be no problem.
It would be a problem for him, he replied, and so I was unconscious for the whole procedure,
which was probably just as well. Who really wants to be awake while people cut your throat and
take drills, hammers, chisels and scalpels to your head, eh?
The steps had been explained to me. The anesthesiologist had told me in person that he would
be present during the whole event, monitoring me and the chemical levels that would be keeping
me in dreamland.
An incision was made in the left side of my neck to expose the carotid artery. This was then set
up so that it could be immediately clamped off in case the surgeon were to accidentally nick the
anterior cerebral artery. I could, he told me, bleed to death in four seconds should that happen.
By the time this step was being taken, I was already out.
I had been awake while they shaved my head. I was to be a skinhead for awhile, but that was
better than being dead. Once I was unconscious, and other preparations had been made, they
made three cuts on the left side of my head and peeled back the skin like a door or a shutter.
Then, at the corners of the two-inch square, they drilled through my skull. With sharp chisels
they cut out the square of bone and removed it. Wouldn't it have been fun to be awake for that?
Because of the tangle of arteries inside of the tumor, the surgeon had to carefully whittle away
the unwanted tissue. When I saw him a day or so after I had awakened from the anaesthetic, he
told me that he had been able to remove eighty percent of the meningioma.
To say that I was groggy following the surgery would be something of an understatement. In
fact, that last sentence is an understatement. For many weeks I was tired, sleepy, slow, unsteady,
bleary, dazed, weak, shaky, wobbly, woozy, faint, dizzy and muzzy. I was unable to think
clearly. Large sections of my long-term memory were gone.
I don't know how long I remained in the Veteran's Hospital. I'm guessing that it was a couple of
weeks. My cranium was still in bandages when I went home. The operation had been performed
at the start of October. By November I was well enough to begin receiving radiation therapy at a
center down in Hillcrest, a neighborhood in San Diego. For the first few weeks, my wife would
take me there and wait.
The procedure only took a few minutes. It was painless, but the effect on my mood was
profound. It was always early in the morning. I would wake up feeling okay. We would drive to
San Diego from our home on the outskirts of El Cajon. We lived in a little valley called Rios
Canyon. My wife and our children would stay in the waiting room, or sometimes they would just
sit in the car.
The actual blast of gamma rays only lasted for a few seconds. When I emerged and rejoined my
family, I was no fun for anyone. All that I wanted to do was sleep.
After a couple of weeks of this, I elected to start making the trip on my own. I could see no
reason to subject the ones I loved to the bother of getting up early, making the long drive to
Hillcrest, waiting and then returning with a somnolent dummy strapped into the passenger seat.
I have always been an early riser, and, as I mentioned earlier, I would wake up on the days when
I had an appointment at the oncology clinic feeling quite chipper, all things considered. I would
kiss my sleepyheads goodbye, and then I would walk down the road through the valley at dawn,
hearing the birds sing and rejoicing in life with all of its colors, sounds and fragrances. I would
catch a bus to the train station in El Cajon, transfer there and ride the train to downtown San
Diego, and then take another bus up to the therapy center.
Coming home was different. It was still bus, train, bus, but on each of these rides I would be
asleep as soon as I sat down. I remember how, at a stop where I would get off the train and have
to wait for half an hour for the bus, I would just curl up on the sidewalk, in a patch of Autumn
sunlight, and go to sleep. After the last ride, I would walk up the valley in a daze, and once I got
home I would go to bed. This routine went on, three times a week, until just before Christmas.
By then my hair was starting to grow back.
I remember how my head would get to itching during this phase of my recovery. The
combination of the healing wound and the short new hair would sometimes drive me into fits of
scratching. I found that sometimes it felt really good to kneel down and rub my head back and
forth on the carpet. I was afraid that I would rub a bald spot into my noggin or disturb the fresh
scar, but it felt so good that I would have trouble stopping. I'm sure I looked like an idiot, but I
didn't care. I probably didn't look too bright curled up like a cat in the sunshine down on that
sidewalk, waiting for the bus, but I didn't care about that either.
I didn't really care about anything beyond my personal comfort at the moment. My memory
was shot. Here's a list of things that I could no longer remember: relatives, friends, past events,
plans for the future, my trade, my livelihood, my dreams, language... Everything was right now.
If my head itched, that was all there was.
I was clumsy, and that is putting it mildly. While walking through a doorway in our home, I
would frequently and unexpectedly slam my shoulder into the jamb. My shoulders were bruised
and sore, but still it would happen again and again. Or I would trip over things in my way, toys,
laundry baskets, packs, chairs, cushions. I wasn't blind, but I acted like I was.
I got very weak during this period of recuperation. We lived near a school, and before the
operation I had been accustomed to using the bars in the school yard to do my chin-ups and
dips. When, I finally got around to getting up there and trying to work out a little, I could
barely do any repetitions at all. I had been used to knocking off eighteen to twenty chin-ups.
Now I could only do four. Worse, pretty soon I could only do three, then two, then one. The
next thing I knew, I couldn't chin myself even one time. I would hang from the bar like a sack of
wet laundry. My muscles were atrophying.
I never realized how much flesh we have nestled in our temples until the one on the left side of
my head disappeared due to atrophy. The entry point during the operation had been just back
of the temple; I can still feel the outlines in my skull, like a poorly fitted panel. But the area of
the temple is, and has remained, hollow. How does one exercise his temple?
I rode public transit, trains and buses, a lot during those first couple of years. Several times I
met other survivors of brain surgery, and we would recognize one another by our hollow temples.
When my EEG came back positive, my California drivers license was automatically suspended.
Nobody told me about this rule, and I continued to drive until the day of the CAT scan. After
that I didn't pilot an automobile for some time. I couldn't even walk in a straight line. It was
quite a while before I felt capable of reapplying for my driver's license. I had to have a letter
from my doctor certifying that I had been free of seizures for six months or a year. I don't
remember which.
What I do remember is that I passed the driving test with flying colors. I wasn't sure if I could
still drive, but my body was.
I endured a lot of pain in my body due to atrophy. The atrophy was due to physical inactivity,
which in turn was due to the confusion and exhaustion that followed the brain surgery. I had
forgotten a lot of things. I had to relearn the routines of daily life. Bathing and grooming were
very difficult for a long time. My head was too sensitive for brushing or combing, but
fortunately the hair was too short to need it. I was afraid to get wet. Any physical sensations
bordered on too much. When I came out of the bathtub I would nearly freeze to death before I
could get dry and clothed. Showers were out of the question. All of those little drops of water
hitting my skin everywhere was too much to take. Brushing my teeth was too much to take.
My libido was in shambles. I couldn't have engaged in sex had I wanted to, and I didn't want to.
I couldn't even sleep with my wife because of convulsions in my arms and legs due to pain and
random neural output. I slept on the floor out in the living room, where I could thrash about
without hurting anyone.
My wife was an angel through the operation and the first few months of recovery. It all became
too much for her, however, and eventually she asked me to leave. Eventually she demanded that
I get out. When I finally acceded to her wishes, eight months after the operation, I was still weak
and disoriented. She wanted to drive me to the home of my brother, my sister or my father, but
I was having none of that. I couldn't drive, but I could walk. I loaded my backpack, and I
walked away.
As the reader may well imagine, this whole episode was a turning point in my life. I was
forty-four years old. I had gone from being a householder, a worker, a husband, a father, an
electrician, a productive member of society, to being a homeless drifter. I could say that the
results of my medical condition included the loss of my wife, my children, my home, my cars and
my occupation. I could also say, with equal honesty, that I had never been happier.
That night I camped in a place that I knew of, an ancient abandoned homestead out in the hills
with old pepper trees, rattlesnakes and remnants of rocky foundations. I was reminded of the
stages of life in ancient India. The baby would become a child; the child would grow to be a
student; the student would learn to be a worker; the worker would marry and become a
householder and a parent. As old age approached, the time would come, for one who followed
this tradition, when everything would be left behind. Free of the trammels of family and
possessions, the person would become a wandering mendicant, a homeless vagrant, a beggar, a
vagabond, a penniless drifter wandering through the land, a burden to no one, eating meals in
the temple at the end of a beautiful day, lost in serenity, praising God.
The people of the far north, the Inuit and the Yup'ik, are reputed to have had the tradition of
abandoning aged members of the tribe on an ice floe. Research suggests that this was a practice
that was indeed followed, but only in times of extreme famine and hardship. When the old one
became such a burden to the band that it threatened the survival and quality of life for the
younger members, he or she might request that they be left behind.
Words like senilicide and invalidicide do not roll off the tongue in modern society. Every
civilization has had its traditions for dealing with the old and the sick. These days we have
hospitals and hospices. The terms assisted suicide, euthanasia, withdrawal of life support and
"pulling the plug" are in common parlance.
As for myself, slogging slowly into the mountains with my bedroll, water bottle and tent, I felt
like I was in both categories: old and sick. But, though I wasn't getting any younger, I was
getting better. My memory was returning bit by bit. A typical instance would be when someone
would mention a name, a place or something that had happened in the past. I would admit that
I had no idea whom or what they were talking about. This always prompted incredulous
expressions. It was hard for them to believe that I could not recall a cousin or an aunt, a family
home or a vacation. Whoever I was talking to, brother, sister, friend, might continue to offer
hints about the hidden subject until suddenly the clouds of amnesia would part and I did
remember.
I found it to be exciting, especially because when it would happen it wouldn't be just the one
thing that popped back into my conscious awareness. Whole chains of people, places and events
would come tumbling back into place. Eventually it became much less frequent, which told me
that I had probably regained most of my long-term memory. (Now that I am in my 60s, it is my
short-term memory that can be a problem, but this is due not to brain damage so much as to
age.)
I spent days walking, arriving first at my sister's home out in the remote valley where she lived
with her brood. I stayed there for a few days, and then I continued to walk higher into the
mountains.
Over the next few years I stayed at the homes of friends and relatives in the mountains and at
the beaches of California, as well as in Nevada, Oregon, Florida and Canada. As I became
capable again, I would try to be of service. House-sitting, pet-sitting, watching over horses or
children, repair work, moving... all of these were ways that I endeavored to be useful. I traveled
a lot, by train, bus and plane. I visited old friends and relations. I learned that I could still use
tools. I helped folks with their electrical and plumbing problems. I gardened. I wrote. And one
precious day, I don't remember when, I rediscovered Yoga.
| Yoga for Carnivores by Jay Dyck |