Book, Pencil, Red
by Catheryn J. Brockett


‘Well now I know how a lawnmower feels when someone is trying to start it’ I thought as Dr. Whiler pushed and pulled the tubing rather indelicately into and out of my groin.  Sort of flopping up and down the table I’m surprised at how resilient the human body is – kinda like one big piece of meat.

“Firing,” he says.  And funny – it does feel like fire shooting into my head.  I close my eyes and watch the hot and golden sparks – like fireworks etch down the inside of my eyelids.

I was having brain surgery.  Well, a pre-brain surgery procedure where dye is injected directly into the brain’s vascular system in order to map out exactly what is going on in there.  It’s called a cerebral angiogram and why this procedure is performed through the unlikely bodily entry point of my inner thigh I cannot tell you.

That’s okay – nothing was really going like I thought it would – when I found out I had something wrong with my brain, I somehow thought it might go a little like this; (cue music) endearing heroine falls ill then bravely battles for life finding within herself a courage, a courage that even she did not know she possessed – a courage that shines so bright she becomes a beacon of inspiration to all and there is laughter and tears – before she is whisked off into the happily ever after sunset by a gentle, wise and yet very hot doctor.  Right?  Of course somewhere in there – there is some graceful fainting and scooping – and there would definitely be that moment when I wake up to find aforementioned doctor staring deeply into my eyes – and he’s all choked up and teary as he says, “Hey – there you are.”  Or something like that.

But there was no fainting – there was no scooping – I was never even sick.  I found out about this problem of mine because I did a research study for a friend at UCLA – he offered me $65 and a free picture of my brain – how could I resist?

I never thought they would find anything wrong – which is odd because I can be a bit of a worst case scenario-type thinker.  I mean, I worry one day I’ll accidentally hit a kid on a bike while I’m driving – and that wandering eye guy in my building who watches me take out my trash – one day he’s going to figure out how to get into my apartment to watch me sleep – and I worry that I’ll never marry and my reproductive region will end up resembling the inside of my vegetable bin – sad shriveled bits of good intentions – leaving me to die alone in a windowless North Hollywood apartment wearing a food-crusted flowered muumuu surrounded by cats and failure – but that they would find something wrong with my brain – really – like that’s constructive.

So when I got the note that someone from UCLA was trying to get a hold of me I assumed it was about the parking, they promised to pay for parking then I had to shell out $6.50!  My call was immediately connected to Susan, the head researcher who asks me if I was experiencing any severe headaches “right now.”  She then tells me they found something in my scans and “it's not a tumor and it's not cancer,” but I should probably get it checked out in the next two weeks.  And she probably shouldn't say anything else because she knows that I don't have health insurance and maybe I would still want to somehow apply.

Right before she hangs up she asks, “did I happen to have a good interventional neuroradiologist?”

“No.  No – I did not.”  I called her back – “did she?”

She gave me four names – when I asked “if it were you – which would you pick?”  She answered quickly, “Oh Dr. Whiler because he is single and hot.”

I wore a pencil skirt and strappy heels to the consultation.  Dr. Whiler, who was good looking – if you go for that George Clooney, Jimmy Smits in scrubs sort of thing – looked at my scans, checked my pupils, asked me to explain the phrase, “moss does not grow on a rolling stone” and told me to remember these three words:  “book, pencil, red.”  Three words which he never asked me about again.  Ever.  Then he diagnosed me with an AVM.

An arterial vascular malformation – it’s basically a clusterfuck of badly formed blood vessels that because they are messed up in the first place are apt to just pfft.  Pfft meaning have a stroke – which could cause – death, or if not then there was about an 8o% chance of permanent impairment.

I sat on the squishy paper-covered table and tried to look casual as he explained my options.  There was your plain old-fashioned crack open the head craniotomy, metal clips, tiny balloons, a superglue injection, the radiation option which was called stereotactic radioneurosurgery – they would just screw a metal frame onto my skull and shoot the thing out with an 18 megavolt photon beam.

Or I could do nothing.  I might be perfectly fine.  It might never go.

But my AVM was located deep in my right frontal lobe – the center of reason and metaphor – so if it went I wasn’t dead I’d be really really boring.  And really – I’d rather be dead than literal.

So I decided to go with the steriotactic radioneurosurgery and scheduled the angiogram.
I found my own way down through the hospital – still – no fainting or scooping, via a map faxed to me the night before.

I was left in a small curtained area with a stained hospital gown.  I’m sure it was sterile and everything but it had a large nasty brown splotch on the side which I turned to see if I could see Bob Hope or the Virgin Mary or a potato chip.  I just hope nobody died in it.

My toenails looked gross.  I had heard that you weren’t supposed to wear nail polish, something about checking circulation, void of their usual pink cuteness they were yellow and cracked and… dammit – I have very lovely toes.  But I could deal with that.  What I could not deal with was the other thing I had going on.  I was in a female way, or – you know, it was my time of the month – having my period and I just didn’t think anybody needed to know that?  I didn’t want to suffer whatever indignity would come along with them knowing and having to do something about it and – you know what – they just did not need to know!  So I just got a super OB tampon – the ones that look like a roll of Charmin that you actually have to run across the room and vault over something to gain enough momentum to insert the beastly thing – and sort of hid the – and – there.  Taken care of.

My gurney was wheeled into a mini OR and left under a full, life-sized screen positioned above me on the wall.  First to enter were the orderly – a large hairy man who I would hesitate to sit next to on a bus – and a beautiful little blonde woman who leaned down to me and said in an English accent, “Technically, Jackson here is supposed to shave you – but if you would rather – I could do it.”  “Yes – yes, I would rather… SHAVE ME?”  As she pulled out a blue Johnson and Johnson safety razor and proceeded to dry shave both sides “down there” – leaving crop circles that would last well into swimsuit season I asked, “Why didn’t they warn me?”  I would have gone to a spa – I would have gotten a wax – maybe a Brazilian, a Playboy – a clear pedicure...

She was taping a large gauze pad to me Adam’s fig leaf style when the anesthesiologist arrived.  No – no drugs.  I didn’t want to be out of it and it was another thing I wouldn’t have to pay for.

Dr. Whiler swept in and began the procedure without a “Hi” or “How do you do” – or a teary, love-filled, deep eye-gazing.  Just wham, bam and “Firing!”

But you know it wasn’t that bad.  Nope – it really wasn’t that bad.  By the time I sensed we were in the home stretch I felt confident that I had a handle on the situation and decided to look up at the screen.  Yup – there it was – me!  A full-size image in that classic black and white shadowy x-ray outline.  I could actually see the end of the tube in my skull, in my brain!  I followed the tube from the inside of my head, down the back of my neck, there it was looping through my heart, down through my abdomen.… and then there, there was… a bright white capsule shaped object so solid, so white it almost glowed against my semi-transparent intestines – my tampon – bigger than life!  So clear on the giant screen that you could almost read OB Jumbo on the side of the thing – people passing in the hall could have seen it!

Like a needle scratch across a record, my endearing heroine fantasy met reality.  I was just a big piece of meat in a gauze pad bikini with the Fourth of July in my head.  I closed my eyes and tried very hard to not be there for a minute so I could regroup.  “Book, pencil, red!” goddammit!  To hell with circulation I decide – before the next procedure I’m getting a pedicure.  And a nice Rita Hayworth robe.  Maybe some funny slippers.
© 2005-08 Catheryn J. Brockett.  All rights reserved.