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.

THE LATEST POST OP PROGRESS

Still very difficult to write (especially this late)—

Here
s what it wookes lie without the oautbstaubgug tedus rewrtiing—\\

So each word has to be rewritten over and over endlessly before it's all slowly corrected.

But the reading is rapidly progressing.

All a matter of perspective.

REDISCOVERY OF "PAINTING" POST BRAIN SURGERY

Things progressing nicely in some areas. I'm able to read more each day, the big challenge being reading silently to myself. Lots of stops and starts, and having to figure out what some things mean etc. but still, my reading skills are definitely on the rebound.

Writing is still very very slow and difficult, with constant correcting, sometimes several corrections for one word, but still a little better.

And now, added to the pleasure I'm getting from food—(I actually cut up, very carefully, some zuchinni (sp?) and carrots and heated up some chicken and potatoes, the most cooking I've done in years—I usually microwave etc.)—and limited one on one conversation, I've suddenly gotten back tenfold the pleasure I find in art I dig.

I got in the mail yesterday two announcements (man this is taking a long time to write and rewrite this simple blog post) for an upcoming show at Tibor dy Nagy gallery, of oil on board paintings by Picabia and Fairfield Porter (the Porter is the lighter, yellowish one) that so overwhelmed me with their beauty I must have sat staring at these reproductions for over a half hour, just savoring the colors and shapes and sensual satisfactions that the very texture of the paint as translated by the reproduction brought to my senses. Too difficult to articulate, but totally satisfying.




So now besides food and conversation, I can add art to my list of deeply satisfying pleasures in these early days of recovering from the brain surgery. Thank God for it all. (Including the half hour or more it took me to figure out how to scan and upload these images!) (Unfortunately the computer doesn't do them justice.)