COMFORTABLY NUMB: Brain Surgery

I was throwing grenades into every room I had constructed about truth, and my soul demanded answers as quickly as I was blowing up the walls. It might sound intense: but without knowing what I believed, I didn’t know how to be.

The Diagnosis

“Essentially, your brain is too big for your skull...”

“Because I’m so smart, right?” I laughed at the ear doctor’s statement and smiled over at my Dad who had tagged along to my follow up appointment.

“I honestly don’t know what these results mean, you’ll have to google it at home and make an appointment with a neurosurgeon.”

He wasn’t kidding. Wait, what, a neurosurgeon? I was just here to get the results from a hearing test that was supposed to come up with nothing.

My dad and I walked back to the car, laughing nervously. We didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t going to let myself feel anything until I knew what the fuck was going on.

A week later I was sitting in a stuffy office that smelt like an old library. The neurosurgeon’s bowl cut framed his glasses perfectly and I couldn’t help but think he looked like Edna Mode from the Incredibles. He pulled it off in a charming mad-scientist kind of way.

He looked at me. Back at my brain scan. Back at me.

He poked my arm and asked if I could feel it. He made me walk heel-to-toe down the narrow hallway in a straight line, tap my nose with my eyes closed, and touch the tip of his finger like ET. I rolled my eyes. I’m fine.

He checked my reflexes. Okay, sir. Let’s get to the point.

“I don’t understand, you should be quadriplegic” he said.

Pardon me?

The Decision

He started digging for symptoms. “Numbness? Neck pain? Tingling? Balance problems? Muscle weakness? Vertigo?” Nothing. I play volleyball, I do yoga. I’m healthy.

“Well, you needed brain surgery yesterday. I can do September 16th.” That was only 2 weeks away.

The neurosurgeon handed me a slip of paper with the surgery date on it, like it was a hallway pass to go to the bathroom in elementary school. I suddenly became very conscious of every step I was taking—like I had forgotten how to walk.

I had a flashback to the first day of school when I was a kid. We were sitting cross-legged in a circle, drawing on mini chalkboards. The recess bell rang and I stood up to run for the door, but my legs had gone completely numb. I never had been able to sit cross-legged, and I don’t know why I thought the first day of class was a good time to try. Wearing invisible 6-inch heels, I took one step and fell flat on my face; my forehead broke the chalkboard clean in half. I stayed with my nose pressed to the orange-tinged felt carpet, nervous to look up and see who would be laughing at me. I was frozen.

Left, right, left. Maybe I should retake that coordination test, after all.

I went to get another opinion from a different brain surgeon. He was nearing retirement, but had a great reputation and was willing to take on my case even though he had never done this exact procedure before. “It’s pretty simple,” he said. Right, cool. It’s not like brain surgery or anything.

He told me that because I had no symptoms, it was an elective surgery and I had to make a decision. I couldn’t speak, and I was so grateful to have my parents with me. My Dad asked if he had kids himself. The neurosurgeon said yes, “a daughter.”

“If this was your daughter sitting here, what would you want her to do?” my Dad asked. I could hear the fear in his voice, the fear that I still hadn’t acknowledged in myself. 

He said he couldn’t tell me what to decide, but there was a chance that the cyst in my spinal cord could permanently damage my nerves—meaning I could become paralyzed if the cyst grew any bigger.

Well, I guess I’m getting brain surgery. 

I made a promise to myself in this moment: if I avoid acknowledging reality, it will be easier to cope. I will be strong, I won’t cry, it’s just a procedure.

I broke down only once. I was in the living room of my apartment. I fell to my knees, it was one of those “why me?” kind of cries. But I never shared that with anyone. I washed the mascara off my face so my roommate wouldn’t be able to tell I was crying when she came home, and I turned on the TV to the hospital drama we were binging: a woman was suffering a miscarriage as she patched up a man’s bullet wound—blood dripping down her legs as she tried to save him. Great, exactly what I wanted to watch.

That night, I wrote a page in my journal for the first time in years. I didn’t like the truth that was pouring out from my hand, so I crumpled up the page and I threw it away.

The Surgery

December 22nd, 2015: I wish I could remember more about that morning. Did I eat breakfast as if it were my last? I’m not sure. Did I sleep the night before? I don’t remember. I guess forgetting goes hand in hand with the numbing.

My sister took a photo of me and my then boyfriend moments before getting wheeled into the surgery room. I stuck my tongue out and threw up a peace sign–because that’s what you do when you’re fearless, right? 

No one was allowed to accompany me down the long hallway to the surgery room. I watched as each panel on the ceiling entered and left my sight, until the anesthesiologist came into my view with a mask in hand.

“See you in a bit,” he said.

When I woke up, my eyelids were taped shut. I tried to move my arms to touch my eyes, but I couldn’t lift them. Fuck, I’m paralyzed, I thought. Or, as it turned out, still numb from the anaesthesia. I heard a man screaming horrifically, and I wanted more than anything for it to stop. He must have been waking up and feeling the pain of whatever he had experienced. Meanwhile, I didn’t feel anything. You could say that’s the theme of this story.

What happened next was a blurry series of events that involved a lot of dizziness, vomiting, and the nurses and my family scheming up ways to induce a bowel movement—a big milestone after being put under general anesthesia.

There was a time, unbeknownst to my sober mind, that I made a Christmas wish for my family to come to the hospital dressed in animal onesies, with fast food for dinner. As you can imagine, I was confused when a couple of giraffes, a dinosaur, a bat, a wolf, and a unicorn were at my bedside table with a stack of McDonald’s cheeseburgers.

The next part I blocked out of my memory because no one wants to be the 22-year-old that shits their unicorn onesie on Christmas day and doesn’t even know it until their boyfriend tells them months later that he knew you shit yourself before you even knew you shit yourself. You know what I mean, right? Anyway, moving right along.

I didn’t block everything out of my memory. What I remember for certain was that there was a whole lot of love. My mom and then-boyfriend rarely left my side. My Dad, sisters, and brothers were at my beck and call, and I had gifts and flowers pouring in from people who I didn’t even know.

I didn’t realize it then, but I know now that the reason I got through my surgery was because of the people who loved and cared for me—when I was so far away from knowing how to love and care for myself.

Post-surgery

The experience of my surgery didn’t immediately change me, although perhaps that would make for a more satisfying story. I didn’t have a new zest for life or an entirely new perspective. I returned to work and I pretended as if nothing had happened. 

I went right back to living the life I was before: the life I thought I wanted. Dream job: check. Downtown apartment: check. A supportive partner: check. Still, I was unhappy. Why the hell am I unhappy? I have everything some people only dream about having. And I just survived brain surgery. I should be grateful. 

The months to follow would consist of a huge deconstruction of everything I thought I knew. It’s as if a veil was being lifted, and I was trying to rip it away as fast as I could. I listened to three podcasts a day, read books about psychology, philosophy, spiral dynamics, and buddhism—I was on a mission to find the meaning of all this. Because if I could understand it, maybe then I could accept it.

I was throwing grenades into every room I had constructed about truth, and my soul demanded answers as quickly as I was blowing up the walls. Without knowing what I believed, I didn’t know how to be.

It was during this time when I hit an emotional rock bottom. I was overwhelmed with confusion and cognitive dissonance, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.

So, as I promised to myself, once I had the green light to travel, I decided to seek the answers through experience alone. To put the books down, press pause on the podcasts—and simply listen.

Two years post-surgery, I built up the courage to have a conversation that would change the course of my life, yet again. With the support of my company, I finally I joined a program called Remote Year, where a group of remotely working individuals from all over the world travel to a different country every month for a year.

The name of the group was Atlas.