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One Week After Brain Surgery

6 years ago1,662 words

I had major brain surgery last Tuesday. It's now the following Tuesday, and I'm... well, I'm feeling terrible, but I'm still - remarkably - here.

I'm lying in bed at home, which is amazing to me. I thought I'd be in hospital a lot longer. I've used Twitter to post probably not especially coherent updates throughout the last surreal week, but I'm going to try to use this post to sum up as much of the experience as I can. Mostly it's just a way of filling the time; it's dreadfully dull, lying in bed all day, too impaired to do anything more but not so impaired that you just drift off for it all.

Overall I feel abysmal... but it's hard to say exactly in what way. Tired for sure, but I think I still have all my cognitive facilities intact? I don't know, though; there might be some subtle cognitive issues. I don't seem to be less intelligent, for example, but I've been more easily overwhelmed by incoming knowledge, and all the input feels more than a bit strange. I think I'm processing okay, mostly, but it all just feels so odd that it's hard to say. My vision feels odd too. I don't know in what way, like if it's doubled or something deeper than that, but looking at things isn't easy, annoyingly. Focusing is difficult. I don't know if that'll be permanent or not. I hope not.

I know who I am, and I remember things, but I feel like I keep 'losing the thread' of reality, like I'm not all quite here or I'm on the edge of existence or something like that. It's hard to explain! And very surreal. Everything feels like a dream, and has since the surgery... though looking back before it feels dreamlike now too.

Anyway. The surgery lasted over eight hours, I was told, then I was kept under anaesthetic for something absurd like eighteen hours after that. I vividly remember going under: I counted down from ten with a mask on my face, then regretted not counting up since I had to go up again from 1; I think I only got to 2. This surprises me, since I don't remember nearly as much from the last surgery I had. I also remember waking up, with a tube in my throat, which was awful, then throwing up from deep in my chest, which was even more awful. I was joking with one of the nurses during all this, though the pipe made talking impossible so I had to write letters on a piece of paper she held up. I also saw the neurosurgeon in that state, though I was so drugged up it's embarrassing looking back! It all feels like it was through a black filter now, that time immediately after waking up. Strange.

Since I'd been immobile during and immediately after the surgery, my body was beyond stiff, and movement was essentially impossible. I had to very, very slowly and arduously get back into that, first by shifting from lying on my back to lying on my side (something so simple, but it felt like one of the most gruellling ordeals in the world), then gradually just moving my shoulders, my limbs, etc. Thankfully nothing was paralysed though.

I was also very slowly weaned off all the drugs and tubes and things they attached me to in hospital, over several days. I had intravenous tubes into my arms and my ankles (surprising), and I also had a catheter directly draining urine from my bladder, which was especially bizarre. I couldn't actually feel it though, and it was quite convenient if anything; we should all wear those all the time! Seems the conscious urination response is bypassed when then fluid is directly drained. How fascinating.

Having drugs pumped through the IVs was convenient when I couldn't swallow (and I'm still struggling to swallow completely naturally even now), but... well, it's weird. I could feel the drugs in my veins, like burning acid flowing through my arm; I could taste them in my stomach even though they'd gone nowhere near my mouth. I also had some bizarre mental imagery for the first few days that I thought might be due to my particular injury, but I'm assuming now that they were due to the drugs, since they were most vivid the final time I had IV drugs and I haven't had them since the IV was removed. They were odd; like intricate abstract paintings or 3D scenes that appeared before me quite vividly whenever I closed my eyes. I wish I'd been able to draw them.

Hospital in general wasn't a pleasant experience, mostly because of the constant sensory bombardment. I tried counting - while lying barely able to flinch - how many seconds passed between someone talking, and I only got to about 12 at most, even in the middle of the night. Either it's the other patients in the ward (all old men) talking to their omnipresent fat, old relatives, or on the phone, or it's the ever-changing swarm of nurses talking about their personal lives or work shifts, often over the top of the patients as if they're not there. Or the old men flirt with them, or vice versa. The hospital is in a place called Liverpool, meaning that most of the nurses had what's called a scouse accent; it's perhaps the most unappealing of all the many variations of the British accent. Look it up if you've never heard it! Hardly music to the ears...

Ugh, we also had alert buttons that summoned a nurse when needed, but sometimes it'd be up to about ten minutes before anyone actually came. I also felt that the old men got way more attention from the nurses than me in general... There was this pervasive feeling of being left out, neglected, while simultaneously completely overwhelmed.

...There's more I could rant about concerning the whole hospital experience, since it really was awful for me, but I suppose there's little point.

One thing I did notice - and continue to notice - is my perception of time. I'm not sure whether it's because I don't have anything to do, or maybe it's the environment, or something, but I notice that I'm consciously present much more than usual. We spend large chunks of our life away from ourselves, either lost in thought, on auto-pilot, away with the fairies, or whatever else. It comes up a lot in the meditation literature as a thing to be aware of when focusing your mind. For me since the surgery, though, consciousness has been very much here, present, and it feels like it is for every second. One evening, I was able to enter into a state of profound meditation because of this; I was deeply present without thoughts really coming to me, like consciousness was turned 100% on but the 'monkey mind' was mostly absent. "I know only peace", I told a nurse. But then that night, the same state became a curse as I lay for an absolute eternity, uncomfortably, never drifting off. For hours and hours and hours, just on. It made me think how maybe Hell is just us existing for a prolonged period of time without anything to do with the abundant time. Words don't do justice to how awful that can be... especially when a head-compressing pain is present too. Would not recommend!!

That was only a couple of nights ago, I think, but it feels like an eternity ago. I've been technically mobile since then, but not really. I mean, I can stand and use the toilet and waddle feebly around (mostly I just feel tired rather than incapacitated), but mostly I've been lying in bed because I feel too crappy to do much else. It's really dull though! I wish I could be doing something more, but anything involving my mind feels taxing. It'll just take time.

My vision is disturbed, which I don't like. It's hard to say in what way; it's not like I've got double vision, or anything so neatly clear. It just feels strange, and it's difficult to focus. I'm just hoping it's my brain readjusting, that in time it'll be fine... though I'm quite aware that the bits of my brain responsible for such things were fiddled around with. I think I already said this? I've been returning to this post throughout the day so I'll just leave it as it is. Repetition shows how addled my brain is, I suppose.

I also tried listening to some of my music compositions - the rambles I composed recently, on SoundCloud - but they sounded odd, wrong. Slightly irritating, out of tune. It's as if before, when I made them, I heard - and tried to share - some beautiful, ineffable rainbow thread, using sounds as an approximation for it, but now the thread is gone and only the ugly, clunky sounds are left. Hinting at what I tried to capture, but not it. It's gone. I'm hoping this, too, is just a temporary thing. Only time will tell.

I feel like there's more to say, but I'll post this as it is so then I can say I had a post a week after surgery. Then I'll sleep. Maybe in a few days I'll be back with something more coherent! Don't know how long before I'll be back to creative work though... Hopefully not very, if I'm already like this after a week.