Mini-story: Squeezed

The brain surgery was experimental, they said, and I laughed. Surely all brain surgery is experimental, I said, and they laughed, but their laughter was the uncomfortable kind. I told them to go right ahead, and I signed all the forms, because what the hell else was I going to do? They talked to me about the risks, but none seemed — in my layman’s understanding — to even remotely compete with death. They told me that some degree of minor damage was unavoidable. They told me about neuroplasticity and cerebral recruitment, and I noticed that they used the same tone of voice people adopt when they’re bullshitting a child that the world is a lot less horrible than it actually is. I wouldn’t become a vegetable or anything, they said — my intellect would almost certainly remain the same. But there would be changes. They were right. It’s remarkable how quickly things start to move when some doctors find a tumour pressing against your premotor cortex. I love the National Health Service, in…