Don’t Truth Me
In Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan” one of the astronauts who is caught in a trap from which there is no escape, tells his colleague “Don’t truth me, man. And I won’t truth you.”
My wife and I avoid truthing each other. She buys all the insurance available and I make jokes about my Parkinson’s diseased brain. The other day, headed to Parcel Plus, I struggled to remember the name of the business and told my son I was going to “Toast and Go.”
Retirement gives me time to face my fears, and still for more than four years I’ve been too busy, mowing the lawn, I guess, so the hard questions were drowned out by the noise.
A few days before my brain surgery I told the doctor who would hold my fate, and my brain, in his hands, to be careful, because I didn’t want to come out of surgery with my intelligence “reduced to that of the average brain surgeon.” He laughed, but the anesthesiologist didn’t when I said all his previous operations were practice for mine. He stared stone-faced and said “No, they weren’t.”
I’ve never checked the real outlook before, and the conclusions vary with the studies, but gruesome fits most scenarios. After surgery to control tremors, many patients suffer some loss of what is called “executive decision-making” ability.” About half of Parkinson’s patients, and by some estimates, 80 percent, develop dementia. Some early onset patients have an average 10 year reduction in lifespan, so I guess fewer years with dementia is the good news.
My private monitoring of my condition doesn’t spur confidence: In 2017 I started playing chess online against players roughly my skill level. I’ve played almost 3,000 games and the trend is unmistakable: I’m getting worse.
But into this cave of bleakness there are two rays of sunlight. One is that for some, brain surgery actually improves cognitive function, according to some studies.
When a nurse reading a questionnaire asked me if I felt I had some cognitive decline following surgery I told her, “No, I feel smarter.” She said there was no box to check for smarter, only varying levels of decline.
What’s the second ray of light? The clarity. I know what will happen. I just don’t know when. It is time for me to decide what to do with the rest of my life and who I want to spend time with. It’s time to enjoy and relax. Continue to fight it, of course, but use the tactics of retreat.
And I’m writing down my stories, maybe my children or theirs will enjoy them. It’s time for me to tell family and friends not just that I love them, but why. It time for celebrations. And finally, it is time for me to tell the truth to myself. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.
