Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

“Yes.” Unenthusiastically.

“Let us know what you find out, and if there’s anything we can do to help out. If you have to like have your sinuses rotorootered, or your nose broken again to get it right or whatever.”

“I will.”

It still felt strange to Frank to have his health issues known to the Quiblers. But he had been trying to pursue a course of open exchange of (some) information with Anna, and apparently whatever she learned, Charlie would too, and even Nick to an extent. Frank hadn’t known it would be like that, but did not want to complain, or even to change. He was getting used to it. And it was good Charlie had asked, because otherwise he might not have been able to figure out what to do. The pressure was becoming like a kind of wall.

So: off to Khembali House, to fill his van with a load of stuff for the farm. Out there in the snowy countryside the construction of the new compound was coming along. Enough Khembalis had gotten licensed in the various trades that they could do almost all the work legally on their own. The whole operation ran like some big family or baseball team, everyone pitching in and getting things done, the labor therefore outside the money economy. It was impressive what could be done that way.

Frank still had his eye on the big knot of trees that stood on the high point of the farm. These were mostly chestnut oaks. They were like his treehouse tree but much bigger, forming a canopy together that covered most of an acre. It seemed to him that the interlaced heavy inner branches formed a perfect foundation or framework for a full Swiss Family extravaganza, and Padma and Sucandra liked the idea. So there was that to be considered and planned for too. Spring was about to spring, and there were materials and helpers on hand. No time like the present! Leap before you look!—but maybe peek first.

All the various scans that Frank’s doctors had ordered had been taken, at an increasing pace as they seemed to find things calling for some speed; and now it was time to meet with the brain guy.

This was an M.D. who did neurology, also brain and face surgery. So just in ordinary terms a very imposing figure, and in paleolithic terms, a shaman healer of the rarest kind, being one who actually accomplished cures. Awesome: scarier than any witch doctor. Whenever the technological sublime was obvious, the fear in it came to the fore.

The doctor’s office was ordinary enough, and him too. He was about Frank’s age, balding, scrubbed very clean, ultra-close-shaven, hands perfectly manicured. Used to the sight of the bros’ hands, and Rudra’s hands, Frank could scarcely believe how perfect this man’s hands were. Very important tools. They gave him a faintly wax-figurish look.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing at the chair across his desk from him.

When Frank was seated, he described what he had found in Frank’s data. “We’re seeing a chronic subdural hematoma,” he said, pointing to a light spot in an array of spots that roughly made the shape of a brain section—Frank’s brain. The CT scan and the MRI both showed evidence of this hematoma, the doctor went on, and pretty clearly it was a result of the trauma Frank had suffered. “Lots of blood vessels were broken. Most were outside the dura. That’s the sack that holds your brain.”

Frank nodded.

“But there are veins called bridging veins, between the dura and the surface of the brain. Some of them broke, and appear to be leaking blood.”

“But when I taste it?”

“That must be from encapsulated blood in scar tissue on the outside of the dura, here.” He pointed at the MRI. “Your immune system is trying to chip away at that over time, and sometimes when you swing your head hard, or raise your pulse, there might be leaking from that encapsulation into the sinus, and then down the back of your throat. That’s what you’re tasting. But the subdural hematoma is inside the dura, here. It may be putting a bit of pressure on your frontal cortex, on the right side. Have you been noticing any differences in what you think or feel?”

“Well, yes,” Frank said, thankful and fearful all at once. “That’s really what brought me in. I can’t make decisions.”

“Ah. That’s interesting. How bad is it?”

“It varies. Sometimes any decision seems really hard, even trivial ones. Occasionally they seem impossible. Other times it’s no big deal.”

“Any depression about that? Are you depressed?”

“No. I mean, I have a lot going on right now. But I often feel pretty great. But—confused. And concerned. Worried about being indecisive. And—afraid I’ll do something—I don’t know. Stupid, or—dangerous. Wrong, or dangerous. I don’t trust my judgment.” And I have reasons not to.

“Uh huh,” the doctor was writing all this down on Frank’s chart. Oh great. Confessing to his health insurance company. Not a good idea. Perhaps a bad decision right here and now, in this room. A sample of what he was capable of.

“Any changes in your sense of taste?”

“No. I can’t say I’ve noticed any.”

“And when you taste that blood taste, does it correlate with periods of decisiveness or indecisiveness?”

“I don’t know. That’s an interesting thought, though.”

“You should keep a symptom calendar. Dedicate a calendar to just that, put it by your bed and rate your day for decisiveness. From one to ten is the typical scale. Then also, mark any unusual tastes or other phenomena—dizziness, headaches, strange thoughts or moods, that kind of thing. Moods can be typified and scaled too.”

Frank was beginning to like this guy. Now he would become his own experiment, an experiment in consciousness. He would observe his own thoughts, in a quantified meditation. Rudra would get a kick out of that; Frank could hear his deep laugh already. “Good idea,” he said to the doctor, hearing the way Rudra would say it. “I’ll try that. Oh, I’ve forgotten to mention this—I still can’t feel anything right under my nose, and kind of behind it. It’s numb. It feels like a nerve must have been, I don’t know.”

“Oh yeah? Well—” Looking at the scans. “Maybe something off the nine nerve. The glossopharyngeal nerve is back there where we’re seeing the encapsulation.”

“Will I get the feeling back?”

“You either will or you won’t,” the doctor said. All of them had said that; it must be the standard line on nerve damage, like the line about the president having so much on his plate. People liked to say the same things.

“And the hematoma?”

“Well, it’s been a while since your injury, so it’s probably pretty stable. It’s hypodense. We could follow it with serial scans, and it’s possible it could resolve itself.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We could drain it. It’s not a big operation, because of the location. I can go in through the nose. It looks like it would be straightforward,” checking out the images again. “Of course, there’s always some risk with neurosurgery. We’d have to go into that in detail, if you wanted to move forward with it.”

“Sure. But do you think I should?”

He shrugged. “It’s up to you. The cognitive problems you’re reporting are fairly common for pressure on that part of the brain. It seems that some components of decision making are located in those sulci. They have to do with the emotional components of risk assessment and the like.”

“I’ve read some of the literature,” Frank said.

“Oh yes? Well, then, you know what can happen. There are some pretty unusual cases. It can be debilitating, as you know. Some cases of very bad decision making, accompanied by little or no affect. But your hematoma is not so big. It would be pretty straightforward to drain it, and get rid of the encapsulated clot too.”