On The Table

Hey,

I've dropped off the web for a while. It's been busy times! I've found since opening myself up to what's going on inside more I've reconnected with an active purposeful life more and more every day. I'm scheming and dreaming all the time now about how I'm going to start myself a new successful life by taking the skills I've developed, the passions I have, and the incredible luck I have in that my parents are willing and able to help me make a start here. Dogs, trees, and the ocean. We'll see where that goes.

For now though, and for here, I want to get back to the more serious side of the story and one part that's been on my mind a lot lately: the operation. I've actually had some serious moments of clarity in retrospect of it lately, and am coming more towards grasping the significance it held for me and the lessons I learned in that experience. Most of my memory of it is blacked out or blurry, and some parts of what I will recount may be my best guess and interpretation of the haze rather than the clear objective truth, but I'm going to try to share what that was for me.

The first part of the challenge was the waiting game. Once I knew it was coming I began to steel myself towards it. I withdrew inwards, seeking to insure myself and those around me against the chances I was warned of. 2% paralysis, 2% loss of speech, >1% death. While those aren't big numbers, for consequences so heavy they felt pretty severe. I was in a relationship then, one I'd handled like a doofus in many ways from the very beginning, and that was exponentially increased by the stress, the anxiety, and I think deep inside me a desire to push people away from me for fear of hurting them, by failing to survive the surgery or make it through as my full self. In those months there was no greater fear than of coming out disabled and having to watch helpless while I destroyed the people around me. This fear and seeking self-protection though created far more harm than good. I wasn't actually unfaithful, but I might as well have been, and I just pulled inwards, played video games, got fat, and stopped getting laid eventually. Inside though I was steeling myself for battle. I knew there was a moment coming more decisive than any of that, and I wanted to be as ready for it as possible. I sought to confront the fears as best I could in my head, to prepare my courage for the worst possible ways to go, and to be ready for what I knew could not be fun : being awake all day while my brain has invasive surgery.

Christmas passed, the new year came. Most of that is a blur to me: gifts, pity, love, fear. Then shortly into the new year the time came to fly to Montreal. Surgery is coming. We were headed to the MNI for the operation, but stayed in a friend of my mom's condo. It was a nice place, but not such a nice night. I slept sound though. I knew the value of those hours of closed eyes and peaceful mind. One thing I've held to through this all is I've never lost a night of sleep. Others have lost nights thinking of me, but no matter what fear has been in my heart when I've laid down and closed my eyes, my mind has let it go and let me sleep.

Waking up that morning felt like game day, ready for batle. We were up with the crack of dawn, stumbling into the grey dirty streets of winter Montreal. From that moment into surgery is something of a blur for me. I got to the hospital and things began at 7:00 am. First they put me under, to take out a piece of my skull around the left temple to behind the ear. Then I was brought awake. We don't know the exact time schedule of the surgery, but I was awake for over 80% of the time between 7:00 am and 4:30 pm and that we know. Other than taking apart the skull, putting it back together, and stitching the scalp through that whole surgery I had to hold myself awake and focused. The reason for this was to prevent me losing my ability to speak or becoming paralyzed. This was a challenge like none I'd ever faced before in my life. The neural anaesthetic they use there is among the best in the world, but it was a challenge finding a balance with me. If my memory is right... there wasn't a real perfect balance where my physical sensation was gone and my brain was still in full function. I lay there on the table, aware of what was happening, head bolted into a frame, strapped in on most sides, right arm free, always being told to move that hand, wiggle those fingers, keep speaking to us, answer another question. The only moment where I have a perfectly clear memory through that whole surgery was the last second. I will never forget that moment. I was asked a question, and in my head I heard myself clearly enunciate the answer, and then I heard what came out of my mouth... nonsensical. I tried again. Nothing. The last I remember were comforting words and being put to sleep right away.

Then I woke up. The instant I woke up I said out loud "can I fucking SPEAK!" and I heard myself and couldn't help but feel exhilerated and relieved like I'd never imagined. When I felt myself lose the ability to speak I thought that was the line crossed and I'd never go back. Feeling myself completely out of control being drained of consciousness with the last memory of losing my ability to express myself... that was some shit. So I woke up feeling like king of the fucking world. I scared/startled the doctors by how loud I bellowed after I heard myself "FUUUUCKKK YEAAHHH!!!!" pumping my fist into the air, head still bolted onto the table. I'm not sure I was supposed to wake up that quickly. I was brought down the elevator still on a rush, grinning ear to ear, hand in the air, laughing and smiling and crying with joy that I'd made it through that surgery and held to myself. Things were far from over then, but I'd made it through one hell of an experience.

The thing is, I didn't even realize how much so until recently. My blacked out memory, editing most of the surgery out, only remembering that last moment of failure, was what I recounted to myself as the full surgery. In my head until conversations not long ago, I woke up, blurry, struggling to communicate, and was barely able to be sliced up before being knocked back out. I kind of knew that couldn't be right, because the surgery was so long, and it wouldn't take them that long to chop skull bits off, and I was supposed to be awake for the rest, but I did't know how long. When I try to recount what it was like to hold myself still for at least 7 waking hours of surgical instruments inside my brain, and knowing that it's on record I was a serious challenge to anaesthetize well, and who I am inside, I speculatively know what I went through in that surgery. It shows in me when I go to do and experience new things. My sensitivity to pain is gone. That shit doesn't matter to me anymore, it is a tool for understanding the body and can be overcome. I think I learned that on the table. I'm almost certain that surgery was a battle for me, and that I was presented with a choice in it. I am almost certain I had a choice between levels of anaesthetic that risked me losing consciousness and surgical stability vs a level that let me feel at least some of the pain of what was happening. I know myself and know what I would have chosen in a split second, and if that's true some of what's changed within me makes a lot more sense, and brings a new context to that moment of losing my speech. I know what it felt like. It felt like the last ounce of energy within myself, the last bit of drive in my heart had been used, I'd pushed myself to the true edge of my strength of will and found the failing point. I know when I was going to darkness then I did not feel weak, I did not feel cowardly, but I felt defeated. That was a lesson that I failed to embrace for some time. It is why death is not so scary anymore. I know so long that in dying I've used every ounce of drive I have, burnt out like a burning fire, it won't matter when it comes.

That wasn't the last lesson I learned while lying in that hospital, but it might be the heaviest one, and the one that took me the longest to really embrace. In the days that followed, where I once again lost my ability to speak for nearly a week, where my skull filled up with fluid and blew up a balloon on the side of my head, where I learned to turn on and off parts of my brain with an ice pack, and where I began to see clearly the tax I'd called upon those supporting and surrounding me as I sunk downwards preparing myself for that surgery. Those are another story on their own though I think.