My brother Steve.
After suffering with Epilepsy for more than 40 years, he is having brain surgery on Monday (11/22/04) in Iowa City. The idea is that they remove the part of the brain that is the source of the problem and the person experiences far fewer seizures than before, sometimes as few as zero.
To blow your mind - pardon the pun or not, it's there - they do the surgery with the person awake. Spock's Brain except real.
In other people that have had this done there are stories of remarkable transformations, people whose personalities improved and were able to function more normally in all aspects of life. Many of them do have trouble coping with the removal of an aspect of their life that defined them for so long. Like Red Sox fans no longer doomed to be one out away, what fills the gap left by the absence?
I'll post the results of the surgery as soon as they are known, and try to revisit the effects over time as they occur to me.
Will probably be in Iowa at the beginning of next week, but obviously unable to hook up.
5 comments:
Wow, that's amazing! This is an elective surgery, right? Is he excited, scared, both? What's everyone thinking out there?
As has been thoroughly discussed, Steve has always kind of been the odd man out in terms of an otherwise very close-knit group of siblings. Sounds like things got even weirder after we got out of college, but I wonder how much of the various struggles of Steve's (seeming lack of ambition, etc.) might have been related to a self-esteem/confidence thing rooted in the epilepsy.
In the years that I encountered Steve, I was always fond of him. I really sincerely hope for the best result possible out of this procedure, and will definitely be interested to hear the outcome.
I will pass along my regards. Elective surgery it is.
The Steve situation is an interesting one. We had a big family discussion last Christmas with him when this surgery possibility was first thrown around. We talked about all sorts of things, including his downward spiral of self-esteem. One thing that I reminded him was that when I was a young kid I remember him being phenomenally independent and in no way did his 'handicap' affect my opinion of him. It was later that he seemed to define himself by his epilepsy, and it just got worse and worse and worse.
This may be a wild watershed moment.
How was he in this discussion?
Is What'sHerName still in the picture? (the dumb girlfriend that looked like she was in her 50s when she was in her 30s? God knows how old she looks now...)
Oh lord.
She is still in the picture. Her existence is both a blessing and a curse to Steve. She's probably partly responsible for the spiral, but also puts up with him and they seem remarkably compatible in their misery.
It will be REALLY interesting to see what happens relative to her.
Perhaps it will be like the middle third of "Flowers for Algernon." If so, she may not compute.
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