Saturday, December 5, 2009

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.

3 comments:

Jamie Rose said...

Shades of the Tell Tale Heart!

Or the crocodile in Peter Pan!

Tick, tick, tick...

Even your physical ailments have literary references.

-K- said...

Titanium plate, screws to the skull, ticking... Each entry is more fascinating than the last one.

Elisabeth said...

Every tick is the promise of more life lived. I think I could live with that, in the circumstances.