GREEN JELLO

I asked the nurse to shave my head completely.

Because they've gotten so good at these procedures (the neurosurgeons, I'm talking about now, with their microscopic instruments and lasers and shit) apparently they only have to shave just a small patch.  But when I felt that little bare spot it was like feeling the onset of something more ominous, male-pattern-baldness, bite your tongue!, that I asked her very nicely if she would just shave the whole thing.  She obliged.  They like me because I've been such a model patient, which is surprising given the tumor.

The tumor's most obvious symptom for me was the sudden onset of a level of irritability not typical of me.  Sure there were the headaches, the blurred vision and occasional lapses of memory, but these all seemed to me to be things that would start to happen as one got older.  And I drink a lot more than I used to and given the sick slide back and forth across the spectrum that I required of my body from caffeine overloads to whiskey-binges and back again, all the while self-medicating with liberal doses of Excedrin-Migraine and handfuls of Advil, the gigantic, hyper-homeopathic-horse pill vitamins from GNC, the Powerbars and shakes, the occasional weed in the garage, that time I tried the Vicodin from my mother's medicine chest, the ecstasy I got from greasy teenager at the concert,  the anti-depressants prescribed by the psychoanalyst and the Ambien and Positrol I got from the Canadian pharmacy, who wouldn't have an occasional headache?  So what if my vision was sometimes a little cloudy?  What was there to see anyway?  Maybe I forgot an appointment every now and then.

But I've always been a very upbeat guy.  I don't necessarily cultivate likability but I have a natural ear for conversation--I like to listen to people's problems and they like to tell me--and I make eye-contact and I smile.  These are all my default settings and they get me into a lot of friendships and acquaintances.  And I love all my friends and all of their dramas and I always have at least an encouraging word. Maybe sometimes it bothers me that they save all the pain for me, to unload on me, to give me their confidence, but then save all their passion and life for other people.  I listen, I smile, I encourage, and then off they go to get into trouble with other people--people that generally treat them like shit.  But I'm getting off the point.  Lately I was beginning to become short-tempered; to lash out impatiently and this seemed off to me.  And maybe the stress of acting so contrary to my personality accentuated what I now know to be an undesirable brain-growth (I did ask the doctor if there was ever a case of new, 'extra-brain', as I came to call my tumor, that actually did benefit its host; he smiled slightly and turned back to my scans) because I started having stabbing pains at the top of my head which, understandably, I guess, made me much more short-tempered.  This was not living I felt and off I went to the GP who navigated me to the specialist, the CT scan and now the electric razor.

Being totally bald seemed more like a choice to me than the little bald spot they wanted to leave me with.   The tumor was so not my choice, I guess that's obvious, but my point is more that I was afraid of feeling ALSO that I was going bald.  It must be similar, the helplessness you feel when the hair just stops growing in spots, to the helplessness I've felt knowing that something UNwanted was in fact sprouting down underneath my scalp; mere micro centimeters underneath in fact.  I'm trying not to sound superficial and vain but given the tumor I'm trying to keep the wave of helplessness to a manageable level and even the smallest prospect of the sinking feeling that an island of baldness in the luxurious sea of my hair would bring on was more than I could take.  So shave it all off--the promise of future hair is enough to sustain me.

The nurses all like me because I eat all my food; and we're talking hospital food here.  But I LOVE institutional food and I always have.  Green jello, flat, wet cheeseburgers, chocolate milk, waxed beans, wilted salads with salty packaged dressings, stale rolls with soft centers and cheap chocolate cakes with sugary frostings--I love it all.  Every time the moody Jamaican man with the food cart would roll to a stop outside the door I share with Mrs. Berkowitz,  her gouty right leg and mind-boggling lack of inhibition with a bed pan, I would politely cut short Mrs. Berkowitz's latest re-run of the relative uselessness of her husband vs. her son-in-law (unless of course it was lunchtime and Oprah was on and then there was just no talking to her) and give all my focus to Nadeem and his ill-tempered plopping of my meal on my tray, Mrs. Berkowitz, if she wasn't watching Oprah, would marvel at how I eat and complain about her husband's pickiness and her son-in-law's absurd food allergies, and the nurses would always be pleased with me when it came time for meds because I had eaten as required.  This was all that was needed, it turned out, for them to like me.

*   *   *

Sorry I haven't written in a while.  The tumor is gone and so is Mrs. Berkowitz.  Now all I have is Mr. Wellman who is sadly not so well.  He doesn't talk.  He lays there on his side looking out the window which gives me a prime view of his ass through the back of his smock.  No matter.  I have bigger fish to fry.  The operation was a great success.  My extra-brain has been relegated to some medical waste container to be cooked somewhere I imagine with a pile of other discarded flesh and growths, unwanted and offending all.  My doctor is very pleased and optimistic.  And I already have a little fuzz on my head.  The only downside so far as I can tell is that I no longer have an appetite.  Well, I should clarify, I am starving but I can't eat.  I had a dream, coming in and out of consciousness in the recovery ICU of Beef Wellington.  I'm not even sure why I know what that is but I can't get it out of head.  Tenderloin (Jesus, just thinking the word is making my mouth water) and pate of foie gras (really??) wrapped in pastry and sliced.  In the dream there was an asparagus garnish.  What the fuck?  Nadeem brought me the hospital's version of chicken cordon blue and I literally vomited into my waste basket.

"You got to eat, mon"

Go fuck yourself Nadeem, no one can eat this dreck.  I tried.  My stomach lurched.  All I could think of was duck risotto and sweetbreads and pan-seared scallops, cippollini onions and confit potatoes.  Where were these words coming from?  Amazing thing the brain.