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 Halloween is all about facing your fears, and I have to admit that I am afraid of brain surgery.
Suzy Becker is an artist and author who wrote "All I Needed to Know I Learned from my Cat" among other things. She lives in Massachusetts. In 1999, she had brain surgery to remove a tumor, and wrote "I had Brain Surgery, What's your Excuse?" during her Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe College. So far, I've avoided brain surgery for myself. Since I also live in Massachusetts, and I also have a "benign brain doober" (that's the technical term I use for it), I have been in the very same doctor's offices, and read the same arcane medical literature, and had many of the same tests and worries. I've been very fortunate that my dear little brain doober has been relatively quiet and unassuming. The biggest impact has been that I can't take aspirin or go scuba diving. I'm cool with that. For nearly a year, I've put off reviewing this book because I couldn't think of a good way to review it without having to talk about how scary it can be for me to think about what could happen. So here's a shout out with the biggest scariest Halloween "Boo!" that I can muster, to the odd little boo boos that live in our brains... Living a balanced life is often taken to simply mean setting aside work in favor of more leisure time. However, in our quest for more productivity and ever greater efficiency, sometimes what we're actually balancing is the need to propel our own goals forward with the need to treat others compassionately and with thoughtful kindness. Just because we push ourselves to our own maximal limits, does not mean that we should push everyone else around us to do likewise. One of the things that makes a great baseball team, is that each participant agrees on the goal, and each player knows the strengths and weaknesses of the others. The pitcher will know that the short stop is getting over a knee injury, and that it would be a good idea to throw to the left side to compensate. When we are dealing with strangers, acquaintances, or sometimes even those we are close to, it is helpful to remember that we rarely have that kind of insider knowledge. Suzy Becker's illustrated memoir is a peek at not only her own inner thoughts about what she experienced, but a view of the reactions of other people around her who are trying to help with varying success. She describes her internal dialog with her brain before the surgery as being like trying to reason with a whiney three year old that wants to keep the tumor as though it were the source of something useful, like her creativity, or maybe a transmitter from another planet. The margins are full of cartoons, quotes, the brain scan that shows the trouble maker that causes her seizures, and handwritten diary entries. She writes after unsuccessfully trying to bribe her brain with chocolate to think of something else, "I went back to the Brain Tumor Society book to see if I could find any patient's accounts of the surgery itself... I wanted to read something by someone with a real tumor, one that came out of the skull, not the nose, with some odds of being malignant. I couldn't find anything, and the harder I looked, the more I knew I needed to hear what awake brain surgery was like from someone who has had it. Not a resident or a surgeon. I wanted someone who really knew to tell me I was going to make it through this part okay. I needed that kind of faith more than prayers right now." I hear ya. I need to have faith that brain surgery could be a reasonable option for the future, because someday I might have to go beyond the waiting room, beyond the noisy confines of the MRI, and beyond the friendly and incredibly gentle, strong and accurate handshake of my brain surgeon, into the operating room and beyond. I read the chapters up through Suzy's surgery with little difficulty. However, after Suzy wakes up from the surgery to find many of her words have gone missing, the reality of the difficulties of her recovery stopped me in my tracks. I put the book down for weeks at a time. I really struggled to finish this book even though it is very funny, touching, and a fabulous story, with terrific illustrations. And because her words are on the page there in full force, the book is ultimately reassuring. I would encourage you to read this book, because it will let you walk in someone else's hospital gown and bunny slippers for a while. It would likely be easier to read if you don't have a personal connection to the story concerning the inner workings of your own head and its mysteriously precious gray matter. Suzy Becker wrote the book that she wanted to read, and she has done everyone a service. It will be a comfort to those who are patients, or those, like me, who may someday be patients. It will help anyone who needs to care for a family member. For everyone else, it offers real insight into what it means to confront a difficult situation "head on", so to speak, and a chance to change our own behavior to be more understanding of the limitations of other people. Suzy Becker's experience reminds us all that the person in line in front of us at the grocery store, who is "holding things up" might have an invisible disability. There may be no wheel chair. There might be no seeing eye dog, no plaster cast, no crutches. We need to develop the imagination to consider that there might be an incredible hidden reservoir of strength and courage on display in front of us. And all that is required of us is our patience. And now that this is finally written, my strange little brain and I can go back to sharing the comforting thought that Halloween is actually all about chocolate and pumpkins. |
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