Doctor's Office

Painting by Alexios Tjoyas


DOCTOR’S OFFICE

I took my kids with me to my doctor, a handsome man—a reservist—who’d served in both Iraq wars. I told him that I couldn’t hear because of my allergies. He said he would likely have to clear wax and mucus out of my ear, but when he scoped inside he discovered nothing.

“Nope, it’s all dry in there,” he said.

He led my sons and me to the audiologist in the other half of the building. I was scared, but I wanted my children to remain calm, so I tried to stay measured. More than anything, I wanted my wife to materialize.

During the hearing test, I heard only thirty per cent of the clicks, bells, and words—I apparently had nerve- and bone-conductive deafness. My inner ear thumped and thumped.

How many cockroaches were in my head?

My doctor said, “We need an MRI of your ear and brain, and maybe we’ll find out what’s going on.”

“Maybe”? That word terrified me.

What the fuck was wrong with my fucking head? Had my hydrocephalus come back? Had my levees burst? Was I going to flood?



HYDROCEPHALUS

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “hydrocephalus” as “an abnormal increase in the amount of cerebrospinal fluid within the cranial cavity that is accompanied by expansion of the cerebral ventricles, enlargement of the skull and especially the forehead, and atrophy of the brain.” I define “hydrocephalus” as “the obese, imperialistic water demon that nearly killed me when I was a baby.”

In order to save my life, and stop the water demon, I had brain surgery in 1967, when I was six months old. I was supposed to die. Obviously, I didn’t. I was supposed to be severely mentally disabled. I have only minor to moderate brain damage. I was supposed to have epileptic seizures. Those I did have, until I was seven years old. I was on phenobarbital, a major-league antiseizure medication, for six years.

The side effects of phenobarbital—all of which I suffered to some degree or another as a child—are sleepwalking, agitation, confusion, depression, nightmares, hallucinations, insomnia, apnea, vomiting, constipation, dermatitis, fever, liver and bladder dysfunction, and psychiatric disturbance.

How do you like them cockroaches?

Now, as an adult, thirty-three years removed from phenobarbital, I still suffer—to some degree or another—from sleepwalking, agitation, confusion, depression, nightmares, hallucinations, insomnia, bladder dysfunction, apnea, and dermatitis.

Is there such a disease as post-phenobarbital traumatic stress disorder?

Most hydrocephalics are shunted. A shunt is essentially brain plumbing that drains away excess cerebrospinal fluid. The shunts often fuck up and stop working. I know hydrocephalics who’ve had a hundred or more shunt revisions and repairs. That’s more than a hundred brain surgeries. There are ten fingers on any surgeon’s hands. There are two or three surgeons involved in any particular brain operation. That means that some hydrocephalics have had their brains fondled by three thousand fingers.

I’m lucky. I was shunted only temporarily. And I hadn’t suffered any hydrocephalic symptoms since I was seven years old.

Until July, 2008, when, at the age of forty-one, I went deaf in my right ear.



CONVERSATION

Sitting in my car in the hospital parking garage, I called my brother-in-law, who was babysitting my sons.

“Hey, it’s me. I just got done with the MRI on my head.”

My brother-in-law said something unintelligible. I realized that I was holding my cell to my bad ear, and I switched it to the good ear.

“The MRI dude didn’t look happy,” I said.

“That’s not good,” my brother-in-law said.

“No, it’s not. But he’s just a tech guy, right? He’s not an expert on brains or anything. He’s just the photographer, really. And he doesn’t know anything about ears or deafness or anything, I don’t think. Ah, hell, I don’t know what he knows. I just didn’t like the look on his face when I was done.”

“Maybe he just didn’t like you.”

“Well, I got worried when I told him I had hydrocephalus when I was a baby and he didn’t seem to know what that was.”

“Nobody knows what that is.”

“That’s the truth. Have you fed the boys dinner?”

“Yeah, but I was scrounging. There’s not much here.”

“I better go shopping.”

“Are you sure? I can do it if you need me to. I can shop the shit out of Trader Joe’s.”

“No, it’ll be good for me. I feel good. I fell asleep during the MRI. And I kept twitching, so we had to do it twice. Otherwise, I would’ve been done earlier.”

“That’s O.K. I’m O.K. The boys are O.K.”

“You know, before you go in the MRI tube they ask you what kind of music you want to listen to—jazz, classical, rock, or country—and I remembered how my dad spent a lot of time in MRI tubes near the end of his life. So I was wondering what kind of music he chose. I mean, he couldn’t hear shit anyway by that time, but he still must have chosen something. And I wanted to choose the same thing he chose. So I picked country.”

“Was it good country?”

“It was fucking Shania Twain and Faith Hill shit. I was hoping for George Jones or Loretta Lynn, or even some George Strait. Hell, I would’ve cried if they’d played Charley Pride or Freddy Fender.”

“You wanted to hear the Alcoholic Indian Father Jukebox.”

“Hey, that’s my line. You can’t quote me to me.”

“Why not? You’re always quoting you to you.”

“Kiss my ass. So, hey, I’m O.K., I think. And I’m going to the store. I’ll see you in a bit. You want anything?”

“Ah, man, I love Trader Joe’s. But you know what’s bad about them? You fall in love with something they have—they stock it for a year—and then it just disappears. They had those wontons I loved, and now they don’t. I was willing to shop for you and the boys, but I don’t want anything for me. I’m on a one-man hunger strike against them.”


Sherman Alexie

from his new book WAR DANCES
Posted over on The New Yorker