SOME THOUGHTS ON THE BRAIN

What this whole experience (brain surgery and recovery) is making clear to me is how much our thinking and behavior is dependent on the way our brains are "wired" more than anything else.

My brain was swollen before the operation because of the "mass" that was irritating it and which they took out. That was followed by swelling from the operation itself and from the "handling" of the brain—an unnatural experience for it and which it reacts to with what feels and seems like a kind of cellular panic.

On top of that the brain's reacting to the heavy doses of steroids to help reduce the swelling and various other drugs to prevent infection and reduce the initial pain etc. So all that contributed to my brain functions being extremely abnormal for me.

The great news is that these operations are even possible, something unheard of not that long ago, and that they succeed on so many levels. My "mass" turned out not to be cancerous, but I have read about (before the operation) and spoken to about (before and since the operation) many people who have had numerous malignant tumors in theirs brains and are still alive and functioning for the most part as good as ever and have been for four, five, seven and even fifteen years!

I feel unbelievably fortunate that my experience was so much more benign in comparison. But as my brain returns to its more "normal" state and I go through the stages of recovery (which can last up to a year I'm told before it's completely recovered) I can see so much more clearly how the ways our brains work individually influences so much of what we think and how we behave.

For instance, in the first days after the operation, I couldn't read or add or multiply simple numbers or understand directionally where things were (some of this is still true though improving) etc. which made me realize what it must be like to struggle with some of these simple ways the mind ordinarily works.

My twelve-year-old struggles with some learning problems that it's been a trial to get the school to recognize because he is so obviously bright and capable in so many other ways. Teachers often ascribe his problems to "not making the effort" or even as one recent science teacher said (pre-operation) "He's just lazy"—which I had to restrain myself from overreacting to. This is a boy who spends hours with tutoring sessions and on homework etc.

But I now realize that this is a common mistake. Obviously a lot of learning disabilities have been identified since I was a kid when they actually just called kids stupid or dunces and punished them or kept them back or expelled them for not keeping up etc.

Interestingly, as I became able to read some later in the first week, I noticed that what gave me the most trouble were simple words, especially if they were repeated in a short space. So an instruction on the hospital room wall that used some complex terms in a short sentence without any repetition was easy to get. But one that had two or three "the"'s or "to"'s in it was make me stumble and have to look it over a few times before I understood it. Very much what happens to my younger son sometimes.

Another thing I noticed right away after the operation, almost as soon as I came to, was "how did we get here"—meaning, who did we go from the world I knew as a kid and young man where for the most part logic and reason and scientific evidence and even simple reality were relatively universally recognized as basically consistent to one where obvious lies and delusional interpretations of "reality" that are based on lies etc. are now accepted as versions of some kind of accepted and even objective reality.

There were a handful of people when I was young who still believed the world was flat or the moon walk was faked or the world is only a few thousand or hundred thousand years old etc., but they got no credence in the mass media or the schools or public forums where reality was general agreed upon based on, as I said, logic, reason, scientific proof, etc. My mind couldn't believe, when it began functioning again after the operation that I was actually alive in a world where someone like Sarah Palin could be taken seriously as anything other than either delusional or an outright liar.

But also realized pretty soon afterwards, that it's the wiring. Yes, some politicians and media personalities and ordinary citizens manipulate the "facts" and reality to suit their own selfish or self-centered or whatever nefarious ends, but many more I believe actually think their version of "reality" is true. Reagan probably did believe that he fought in WWII even though he never left Hollywood and mistook movie experiences for real ones.

Just as I am now able to read much more than I was capable of only days ago, but do so somewhat haltingly, having to reread some words and phrases to understand what I'm reading, I understand that that is "normal" for many people. And my inability to do much simple math or figure out which direction a local landmark is facing it etc.—something that came to be without eve thinking before—a lot of people have trouble with all the time.

It's like musical ability. I used to have a certain fluidity with my fingers when I played piano that is lost to me (but will hopefully return as I recover), but my current lack of that kind of musical facility is relatively common for many folks. As is, it's clear to me now, the capacity to use logic and reason to see through the lies and misrepresentations and delusions of so many political and media personalities.

It's obvious that a lot more people than when I was a kid, or at least a lot more influential people in the public eye, cannot use logic and reason and scientific evidence to figure out what's real and what isn't, but instead rely on emotion and personality and group-think etc. to reach conclusions that make sense to them, that it's just the way they're wired.

It's been and continues to be humbling to have survived this surgery and to experience the limitations—temporary or not—that have resulted from it. And it is given me more sympathy, or maybe I mean empathy, for those who live with these kinds of limitations on their metal capabilities all the time.

P.S. I haven't been responding to comments on this blog because typing and any kind of writing as been so laborious given now many mistakes I make and have to correct just to get a simple sentence out, but that has been rapidly improving in just the past few days, so hopefully soon I'll be able to respond more directly with comments and e mails etc.

PPS: I realize rereading this post that there are several mistakes but writing this much was hard enough so I'm going to leave the ones I missed correcting.

3 QUICK POST-BRAIN SURGERY EXPERIENCES

1. As things return more to "normal"—or closer to it I guess I should say—I almost miss the trippier aspects of the way my perceptions were uniquely altered after the brain surgery. But one that will remain I guess forever, is when I take a shower, the sound the water makes as it hits my skull is different for the section where the titanium plate is. Like almost everything connected to this process of my brain slowly recovering its functions, I find this fascinating.

2. Watched a movie on TCM last night I'd never seen before but was perfect for my capabilities right now: RANDOM HARVEST, a black-and-white classic starring Greer Garson and Ronald Coleman. Kind of trippy in its own way as well and having to do with what they used to call "shell shock" and we now call Post-Traumatic Distress Disorder. The main way it was manifested in the flick was amnesia, but though a little overly melodramatic as far as the plot went, Garson's and Coleman's acting was so good and in her case so realistically restrained, it worked. At least for me. And as with most things since the operation, I found it so delightfully satisfying I couldn't resist clapping when it was over.

3. Another great media experience—and easy to follow because it was one-on-one and in a simple setting—was catching a rerun of an Elvis Costello Sundance channel music interview show that featured Bill Clinton. Once again I was knocked out by how smart Clinton is. Cosetello's questions were focused mostly on music, but many of them in relation to the job of president and international politics. Clinton not only answered them clearly but eloquently and humble, I thought, while at the same time displaying a familiarity with such a wide range of musical taste and knowledge, it felt almost like a grad school seminar given by the smartest teacher you ever had. I mean the guy was referring not only to all kinds of popular music with ease, but more obscure and "difficult" jazz and country and swing and etc. and also top world music creators I never heard of and am pretty sure were out of Costello's range as well. Very satisfying little triumphs of cognition I'm grateful for.

MORE INTERESTING (AT LEAST TO ME) BRAIN SURGERY EXPERIENCES

One of the first things I noticed in the first several days in the hospital (and beyond) after the brain surgery was my brain was ticking.

Well actually it was the titanium plate and screws under my scalp where my skull had been opened.

They said it was the titanium adjusting to the scalp and fit of the plate etc. and would subside after a week or so, which it did.

The ticking would go on for several minutes and then stop. During the day no one could hear it but me. So I assumed it was only inside my head.

But one night in the hospital, after the lights were out and the door shut and my room mate had fallen asleep and everything was relatively quiet, but before my daughter, who was staying with me that night, had fallen asleep in the chair that opened into a kind of chaise lounge, the ticking started and I told her. She leaned in as close to my head as she could, and heard it!

"Tick, tick, tick, tick" etc. Like a loud second hand on an old watch that had somehow gotten planted inside my skull!

I almost kind of miss it (though it has come back occasionally since).

PS: The writing is getting better, especially if I type really really really really slowly and deliberately, one letter at a time. Tedious, but less frustrating than repeatedly hitting the wrong keys, which no matter how slowly I go still happens, but much less.

THREE WEEKS THIS AFTERNOON SINCE BRAIN SURGERY

They say that when they wheeled me into the recovery room after the operation, expecting me to be out for at least an hour and then take a few more hours to come to fully, instead I sat right up immediately and began talking.

The art of discourse and conversation was never lost, nor was my appetite—I was hungry as soon as I came to also.

But for the first few days I couldn't do simple math, couldn't read or write or understand how to transfer a simple message from one person to another, and much more I couldn't do.

By the time I left the hospital almost five days after I entered, I could read simple instructions and signs etc. to myself with some difficulty and much more easily out loud. And simple math was coming back slowly. But listening to music, watching TV or listening to NPR, or reading anything longer than a sentence or two to myself or a paragraph or so out loud was still seemingy impossible.

But as you know if you've been reading this blog, slowly over these three weeks, many things have returned. The first movie I could watch all the way through without being overwhelmed to the point of my head actually hurting and my perceptions being erratic and disorienting, was THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, because it was in black and white, had mostly confined sets, focused on two or three characters relatively broadly portrayed and had a simple, clear, direct message. I loved it as I did the first time I saw it only now even more because I could follow it and enjoy it despite my brain's post-operative limitations.

As I've shared, more and more has come back to me, including finally and only recently a capacity for enjoying music and art again, being able to see them as fully realized and integrated sensual (and sensory) experiences rather than kind of pixilated shards of distinct and separate experiences too varied and busy to contain as one cohesive cognitive experience.

So everything has improved and is continuing to. Writing this, for instance is very difficult but not as much as it was only a few days ago. And yesterday I read, with difficulty and some rereading and stopping and starting, a couple of small articles in TIME. I imagine it's what a lot of people deal with every day, but I never had to until now.

I'm getting out more—took a nice long walk in the beautiful park near my apartment just now—and start occupational therapy soon (probably should have started sooner but the logistics seemed a problem since I'm not driving yet, etc.). There's still many limitations on what I am capable of, including not really being able still to focus on more than one thing at once, two in some cases where they are complimentary.

But I am also still feeling very patient with myself, and others too for the most part. Grateful for it all. And finding the whole process fascinating (like why do my fingers want to type "party" for "part" or "one" for "now" or "or" for "for" or "patoculr" for "particular" etc.).

More will be revealed.

TWO STEPS FORWARD ONE STEP BACK

I didn't read as much the day before yesterday, so found it more difficult to do yesterday. I guess I have to keep exercising my mind.

I also wanted to mention that I forgot another great performance from that Ed Sullivan music special from his shows from the 1960s, a medley of Sly and the Family Stone's "DANCE TO THE MUSIC and EVERYDAY PEOPLE"—knockout live music and performance.

And wanted to note that I always felt I was blessed with a certain amount of physical grace, whether real or just a personal perception. Even as I aged. But that's gone since the brain surgery, at least for now.

I've gone through other operations and physical challenges that have removed that sense of comfortable physical coordination in some ways, but never so extensively. For instance I tried playing the piano yesterday, something that has been second nature to me since I was a child, but I couldn't get my fingers and hands and brain (mostly my right hand actually for most of these challenges, which is the hand that I could do the most with musically) to cooperate so gave up in frustration.

But interestingly, my writing is improved a lot right now as I'm typing this. Fewer typos and reversing of my intended spellings and meanings. Yeah! Hopefully this will last and continue to improve.

I also watched Obama's West Point speech. I was alone so could concentrate on it and easily follow it (any distractions can send my brain into feeling overwhelmed, too much stimuli for me these days means anything more than one, possibly two things at a time).

Not a bad way to live if we could allow ourselves that much space and time to process stuff that simply and with that much undivided attention. (The writing is actually getting a little more difficult as I'm doing it, so more corrections necessary, one of which I wanted to point out because it's so unintendedly interesting, for "attention" I initially wrote "attemption".)

Beautiful day here. I think I'll take a walk and enjoy it. Continued thanks for all the help and support and good wishes I've been getting. One day at a time.

NOW MUSIC!

It's been difficult for me to listen to music since the brain surgery. The sounds that normally blend into a cohesive whole in most recordings, my brain was somehow atomizing into discrete units that made each musical moment sound overwhelmingly complicated—jarringly, gratingly so.

Difficult to explain or articulate. I tried one day on my first outing in my little town where I was being helped by my friend Sue and ran into another friend, the great jazz pianist, Bill Charlap. I was excited to communicate what I was experiencing with music, but I'm afraid I came off as a little out of my mind, which is of course partly what this whole experience has been about.

But yesterday, I tried listening to some music again and it sounded close to normal. I hit the shuffle key on my laptop and the first tune was an old Billie Holiday recording from the early '30s, THESE'N'THAT'N'THOSE (beautiful tone to her voice) followed, as it happened, by Bill Charlap's trio's version of SOME OTHER TIME, as close to Bill Evans as is humanly possible, while still being Charlap. A haunting tune, one of my favorites.

Later I watched a PBS special showcasing "for the first time" musical/video selections from the Ed Sullivan show in the 1960s, the highlights of which included of course the first appearance by THE BEATLES, plus two knockout performances by THE ANIMALS (WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE and THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN)—better than the original recordings, especially Eric Burden's vocals and Alan Price's keyboard work—THE DOORS doing LIGHT MY FIRE (and angering Sullivan because they were supposed to censor the lines about "getting higher" but didn't) and THE ROLLING STONES looking almost teenage, with Kieth Richards looking actually kind of goofily giddy and self-conscious.

Anyway, I'm writing a little better, but this still took way too many repeated attempts to correct yaw too many mistakes so I'll stop now.

(I'm leaving that one last mistake as an example of how my brain is still transposing letters etc.)

BEAUTIFUL (POST BRAIN SURGERY) DAY

Just took a pretty brisk walk, several blocks, in the cool, crisp, air.

A bright and shiny day, at times almost chilly, but felt so good to be out and feeling stronger.

The caw of a lone crow was so sharp and clarion, it felt like the definition of what it means to be alive.

The last leaves still falling, the endless (we hope) natural cycles.

How wonderful and fine life is when the possibility of losing it becomes so current and realistic.

To be alive, what can disturb the awe of that realization? Today, nothing.