Ways that the mind works

It's an unfamiliar feeling when you wake up from 9 hours of surgery, to have the 'dark passanger' in your head. I know this might not make sense just yet, but it will once you see who 'they' are.

I was like everyone else who was a functional adult. I had a life I was content with, granted we all want more. I was going back to school to get my degree in Computer Science, and was working a regular 9-5 job. Life seemed pretty ordinary, until things went sideways...literally.

June 3, 2012 at 3:35pm I was working on paperwork for an order that was set to be shipped that day, and a fellow coworker came in to my office to ask about a special order item that was part of this order. As I was talking to him and rifling through paperwork, a strange sensation creeped down my neck and my left arm shot out suddenly. After that the world fell sideways and fade to black.

I had just had a grand maul seizure due to an undiagnosed brain tumor.

When I came to I was lying on a gurney being lifted up and rolled into an ambulance, all the while having medics asking what day it was, if I knew my name, where I was, who the president was, etc. I understand that they need to check if I'm aware, but I had a seizure. It's not like I was in a coma or was teleported from somewhere else. I answered all their questions, and the only one I answered wrong was the day of the week. Keep in mind my work week started on a Sunday, and in my mind that was my Monday. Apparently no one wanted to hear that, and throughout my entire ordeal I was asked why I said that.

I digress.

After a couple months of trying to control micro-seizures, I was setup for brain surgery 4 weeks after shoulder surgery (I separated my shoulder when I fell during the start of the seizure). Nothing prepares you for something like this, and like most of my medical related injuries, I didn't really think about it until the day of the surgery.

August 20th 5:30am I'm prepped and set in a waiting room for surgery. Keep in mind my thoughts were all over the place to the point I didn't sleep at all, even after a nurse gave me a sleeping aid. The doctors came over to talk me through what would happen, and that during part of the surgery I would be woken up gradually to answer questions. These questions were very generic, but they were to determine what areas of my brain the brain tumor was contacting. Yes or no wasn't an option, so I had to answer with the word grape or orange to make sure my cognitive and problem solving skills worked. After that I was sedated and wheeled into the OR. After the breakdown of what would happen I asked and was told that 99% of people who go into this don't remember ever being woken up.

Now this is the part of my story that scared the doctors, but we're in the middle of surgery and it's time to wake me up. Nothing ever goes as planned, and of course the idea of gradually waking up sounds great. Except when you bolt wide awake and try to move while the top of your skull has be cut open, and your head is sitting in a cranium clamp. I had 4 nurses and 2 doctors yelling at me to not move, and to this day I still have dents in my skull from where I tried to get up.

So after 9 hours of surgery, I'm in my room. trying to wake up enough to see the doctor and ask or answer any questions. One of the first ones he proceeded to ask me was if I remembered anything from the surgery. I told him I remember being yelled at about moving, and the all the general questions I answered correctly, as well as the questions that I couldn't answer due to the tumor causing issues. Clearly I confused the doctor, and this is due to the fact that I didn't make any of the information up, miss how many people were in the OR, and was accurate as to which doctor asked what questions. The confusion set in after I was told that I shouldn't have remembered that much detail about it, if any of it at all.

It seemed that I had broken the doctor after all this, because the other doctor had to come in and finish talking to me. As I was told my brain clearly worked in a different fashion that most, mainly due to the synapses and what speed they fired off at. Simplest way to describe what I was told is that the average person's brain is like a 4 cylinder car engine. One piston firing at a time to help move it along, like synapses firing to produce a thought or action. Pretty simple and basic stuff. My brain apparently didn't like the rules and decided that 4 cylinders isn't enough. Mine was firing at almost 5% faster than the average person, meaning that I was a 4 cylinder engine with a turbo intake and a tank of NOS.

My mind had been something I was use to, but never knew that other people didn't work that way. I would absorb information at an insane rate, but I would burn through a lot of that information if it didn't pertain to anything of interest or usefulness. To solve problems, basic every day things, my mind would have 800 possibilities for one thing.

Why would anyone need to think about 800 possible options and outcomes for eating a cheeseburger? Exactly!

While I found this fascinating to learn, I also noticed something that I had never experienced before as well. There was this dark entity that 'spoke' to me for the first time after I was released from the hospital. I wasn't sure I even understood what it was at first, but then as the healing process went on it became more noticeable. This 'dark passenger' was something I had read about, talked with people who had it about, grew up in a house where it affected people I loved, but never experienced it first hand.

Until now.

I was 31 when I was overcome by what is medically diagnosed as DEPRESSION. As I stated I had a pretty good life, job, relationship, etc. The only part of my life that was affected by depression was what I had experienced through my brother and mother having it, even my best friend having it. I didn't have actual understanding as to what it actually meant to have this anchor inside of you.

I was angry, sad, ashamed, upset, pissed off.

I ran the gamete of emotions when this voice would start up, to the point I didn't leave my house for almost 6 months. I hated the world for letting me survive surgery and have this thing follow me out. I pushed away friends, family, hobbies, etc. Hell, I stopped doing anything I actually enjoyed because I was unable to overcome this anxiety of loathing for myself.

It's one of those things that you can see or read about in someone else, but when you're in the middle of it affecting you nothing can change it. One thing I have learned is that as I grow further away from that life altering situation I learn to find ways to push that 'asshole' further away as well. I have good days and I have bad ones, but the good ones tend to last longer and come way more often because I choose to try and overcome it. I'm an artist and for a while I would do my art as a way to push through the pain or depression, but a lot of my art was reflecting how I saw myself not the world. I understand that art is meant to provoke emotions, but I hated seeing what I saw and what the world looked like through depression stained glass.

It's been almost 9 years and I still fight with it to this day, but I do know that my outlook on the world has improved a lot and it's reflected through my artwork. Be it painting, drawing, sculpting, or photography my view of the world has definitely gotten brighter. As I said there are days where I'd rather watch the world burn, but I push through it little by little because I know I've only got one life. Why spend anymore of it locked in my room in bed when I can go explore a new place or new book, and have the ability to lock depression back in the box under my bed?