“…let me live it as a 1.5”

My little personal soap opera about my ‘deep brain stimulation’ surgery is turning into a threepart miniseries.

Episode one saw me about to enter hospital worried whether I would be assigned a humour therapist who told bad jokes. Episode two had me recollecting the low point of my surgery as the frantic search for an allen key to hold the surgical chair in place. Episode three today is my report on the outcome of the surgery.

My first orders were to lay low and to avoid strenuous but unpleasant activity like washing the dishes, laundry and vacuuming. I found I was able to comply with these instructions without difficulty. I nursed the gashes in my head and bumps in my chest with great respect. The opening of the local dairy bar proved fortuitous.

My doctors told me that they did not want to see me again for several weeks. Apparently, apart from the well known placebo effect (“they’ve just done surgery on me, so I must be feeling better”), there is also a benefit that is felt by the brain area merely because someone has given it some TLC. Despite the fact that nothing had happened yet, several people I ran into observed that I was “looking good” and obviously much better. That had a placebo effect as well.

Eventually, my seven weeks in suspension ended and I went back in early July for the official ‘turning on’ ceremony. A gaggle of doctors and nurses stared at me intently for signs of involuntary movement as the ‘juice’ was turned on and up, and I was officially handed my remote control. Apparently, you can go through airport security with one of these devices turned on and it will disable the whole system. So you have to turn it off sometimes. And sometimes, magnetic forces can turn it off accidentally, which makes it useful for you to be able to turn it back on if you have gotten too chummy with your fridge magnets.

“Can you show me the mute button?” my wife asked impertinently. I nobly let the remark pass, filing it away as it may prove useful in some future discussion about imprudent household expenditures.

With the turning on, I was now officially a chemical/ electrical “hybrid.” My expectations were sky high, and for the first couple of days, I felt full of energy. But the next day, and for several succeeding days, I was done in and discouraged.

I went back for my first adjustment a week later with my tail between my legs. I had to refrain from taking medication that morning, and would barely have made it into the hospital except for the fact that I knew there was a Tim Hortons in the main lobby. My doctor said “turn him up to 1.5.” She called in her sidekick (a post doctoral fellow from the United States) and asked him what he would do.

“I’d turn him up to a 1 and measure the improvement.”

“Well, I turned him up to a 1.5.”

“You went right up to 1.5! Did you check his ears for smoke?”

Now, I have no idea what being a 1.5 means, although my doctor told me later it was in fact quite a low setting. But my improvement was extraordinary. Not five minutes after the upgrade to 1.5, I got up and ran down the hallway, still off my medication. “Never mind the mute button; show me the on/off switch,” pleaded my wife. I tucked that one away too.

Twelve days later and counting, I have experienced no “slow” or “off” periods at all, whereas beforehand I would experience two or three such periods a day. I have experienced no wild body gyrations, or other predictable side effects. I would like to call it miraculous, but I don’t want to belittle the science that went into the surgery. It seems to be working, wonderfully. Now my doctors are working to wean me off medication that I don’t need anymore. And I am planning to erect statues of them, or name my grandchildren after them, or dedicate a float in the Pumpkinfest parade to them. And as they used to say in the shampoo commercials, “if I have only one life, let me live it as a 1.5.”

David Simmonds’s writing is also available at www.grubstreet.ca.