Navigating life after having a chunk of my brain removed includes continental retreads, career swerves, and spectacular failures on the road back to independence. My first attempt to re-enter society was a fabulous disaster, but it was quite bold. Between an unhealed brain constantly flashing alarms, the paranoid dawn of COVID-19 lockdowns, and a trusted tactic to drink stability into my misfiring neurons, the Ev Machine seized after a few months, mechanically and neurologically. In the midst of my system failure, I made a hasty retreat back to America, culminating in a cinematic meltdown somewhere high above the Pacific.
In September 2019, my scooter tangled with a car in Chiang Mai, Thailand, leaving me with a shattered skull and a missing slice of my temporal lobe. After surgeons bolted my head back together, I spent a couple foggy months in Indiana doing outpatient rehab, feeling shockingly chipper about it all. I was walking, talking, and feeding myself. In my concussed logic, that meant I was ready for a clean restart.
Independence was my goal and returning to Daejeon, South Korea was the obvious play. I had spent most of the last decade there. Signing an ESL contract meant a paycheck plus a nearby apartment, and an immediate ticket back into the expat community, the tightest group I’d ever known. I’d never been a proper adult with a job in America before! Teaching in Korea was the path of least cognitive, and financial, resistance.
Five months after the crash, I was back in Korea, but it simply wasn’t the one I’d left in late 2018. At Incheon International Airport, through a gauntlet of temperature checkpoints and symptom questionnaires, quarantine officers had me download the Self-Diagnosis App. This would be used to inform the government of my health and physical location. From there, I was loaded onto a designated Quarantine Bus and shuttled straight to a small dormitory room arranged by my new boss.
I was to stay locked away in strict isolation for 14 days. Okay. Uh huh. Sure.
Being put under mandatory house arrest was never going to fly. The system demanded I log my vitals twice a day and threatened automated alerts if my GPS strayed from the registered address. Simple fix? Head out without your phone! Knowing the town and enough Korean to get by, I was able to get to where I wanted to go without issue.
Regardless of my brain damage or Korea’s strict laws for breaking quarantine, including stiff penalties and deportation, there’s no question I wasn’t going to comply unless I was actually ill.
Sneaking into locked-down Daejeon meant throwing on a face mask. But this introduced a confounding factor that began to whittle away my senses. Along with my smashed head, broken ribs, and fractured shoulder blade in the crash, I also snapped a tiny bone behind my eardrum. I’m now about half-deaf in my right ear, with persistent tinnitus as background static.
Compensating for my hearing loss, I’d begun to read lips to help check if what I was hearing matched the English I saw. Universal masking burned that safety net away, and I realized how much information I was missing. I knew I was becoming more cognitively lost. It’s a haunting sensation when you’re aware you’re lost inside your own mind. This stress amplified my most persistent post-op symptom: tremors.
They primarily live on my left side—the physical mirror of the damage on the right side of my brain. Their strength reflects my mental state, particularly stress or high emotion of any sort. (Even positive emotions.)
Even on my good days, there’s a tangible electricity in my left hand, and small tremors are constant, the epicenter in the meat of my thumb. Activity and focus quell them without thought. Stronger ones are full-on shakes, the energy coursing to my elbow, flexing my forearm. On my left side, it’s a known quantity. When the tremors float to my right hand, that’s one of two Red Flags I keep in mind.
Hallucinations, of any kind, spark the other emergency alarm. I had one confirmed visual one in Thailand, but auditory hallucinations were a critical problem I faced in Korea. I had trouble telling which sounds were real and which ones I was imagining.
These hallucinations weren’t me ‘hearing voices.’ Mostly, outside noises would repeat and loop in my head, often stacking different auditory effects to the track, like guitar pedals stomped on haphazardly. In class, this could be a pencil rolling, pieces of paper crumpling, a bottle dropping to the floor, kids coughing. These layers would add up, and reality became harder to discern.
At home in the early days, I spent a lot of time hunting for sounds to verify if they were real. Eventually, I just wanted confirmation that they were hallucinations. Then, curiosity sated, I could move on. As the constant real and ‘fake’ sounds competed, I learned to mostly ignore the swamp of noise, sometimes to my detriment.
Soju, Korea’s ‘national drink,’ became an equally useful and dangerous self-medication. Understandably, many associate tremors with alcoholism, and I’ve also experienced them through detox. However, alcohol really did work to ‘soothe’ my epileptic tremors. When stress reached a certain threshold, soju was a quick, reliable fire blanket to smother my shakes.
Surrounded by anxiety, and uncertain of my brain’s faculties, I was constantly toeing my own Red Lines. With a standard $1 bottle available at every corner store, I had a cheap and abundant escape route for my mental and physical relief.
This was a dangerous tightrope to dance on, because you can also drink your way into seizures, something I learned the hard way through aggressive repetition. I have no idea how many times I woke up in the ER. I’d also wake up in my own apartment in a daze so clear I knew something fishy must’ve gone on when I was ‘asleep.’
Work had largely gone to one-on-one virtual teaching. With all our staff in the teachers’ room, I’d go to a private office when I had ‘class.’ Professionally, they went okay, though we had to stop the kids’ parents from helping outside the camera’s view. Personally, however, it added another false veneer to reality, further separating me from the real world. Like baseball games that year, where cardboard cutouts made up the ‘spectators,’ life was performed with an artificial restraint on its own humanity.
I don’t remember much of my life during this stretch. With society shut down, there wasn’t a lot to anchor memories to. Between flares from my unhealed brain injury, the combined effects from drinking the shakes away, and the maybe half-dozen seizures I had, I knew my frayed rope was about to rip. Its swing had become more perilous, and the alcohol I poured on it only quickened the countdown.
Aware I was drinking myself into a slow-motion suicide, I had to bail. At some point, I’m pretty sure I talked to my boss about leaving, and I’m fairly certain I used a medical excuse. I’m positive I don’t remember how, because I was saucing constant symptoms away until the sauce became a symptom. Head low, I managed to pack my things and book a flight to get back home. Unlike my other trips to Incheon International, this time I did it in style.
My Uber dropped me off at a dark, barren, deserted airport. Enough flights had been cancelled that large sections had the lights turned off. Nearly everything inside was closed and there were barely any people to get to those that remained. After I went through their temperature checks, I mulled over the last year of my life as I waited to board. I was moving transcontinentally for the third time, utterly defeated in my brazen re-entry attempt.
While there were few fellow passengers, Social Distancing diktats were enforced to further separate us, a helpful reminder that we really are all alone in this world.
To my immediate pleasure, and later distinct horror, I got to watch Joker for the first time on the flight. The film follows a young man, a failed comedian who also suffered severe head trauma, as he descends into violent madness. He’s an unreliable narrator, misinterpreting events or making them up altogether. Watching a film about a man struggling with his inability to understand reality around him, as a young man who was struggling with his inability to understand the world around him, perhaps wasn’t the wisest way to distract myself 35,000 feet over the Pacific.
On at least three occasions, I quietly got up and made my way to the lavatory. Deep in focus, I carefully balanced each step against the empty seatbacks along the aisle. Once the bathroom door clicked shut, I had my private little sanctuary. I made sure to not be heard, as attention was what I was trying to escape, but those existential tears were soggy, sobby and successfully solitary sessions.
It was a prototypical ‘man in the mirror’ moment. I could see me, and I was thinking about it, so I’m real. Well. That’s a good start. Then there’s the scar that goes through my crown above my forehead. The docs sawed that one in, and unlike the others, it’s clean, straight and maybe six inches long, where it’s met by a deep divot on the back of my head.
I looked at myself as I fingered those grooves, going over my skull’s haphazard puzzle, further furious that my re-entry was obstructed by artificial ‘safety’ barriers. I wanted to be a real person in a real place doing real things. Not a wayward cog in the top-down, poorly designed clock that the world was suddenly forced to tick to.
Mid-tock back to America, I returned to my seat, and as far as I know, I successfully convinced the few passengers and staff that I wasn’t mid-breakdown. I did finish the film. I also ran through the full ration of complimentary hooch provided per passenger. I may have purchased more and the bar may have cut me off. I don’t recall.
Eventually, the wheels touched down where my family would pick me up. Exhausted from the long flight and my psychological standoff with sanity, I had an easy excuse to play the Jet Lag Card to stay away from people for a while. Frankly, I don’t remember much of this time.
Even then, a perpetual optimist, I already hoped to refurbish my vessel for a return voyage, one I could pull off without crashing into the ER. But first, I needed my Joker safely in sight, not buried in the deck waiting to pounce. This former patient still needed to be patient. A proper reboot would take longer than anticipated.
It IS this bad.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt008T7010/
https://ia801407.us.archive.org/6/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
Sorry, E.
I got a 404: page does not exist error.
Seems like a perfect metaphor.
Ditto.
2 works for me and is perfectly exsplainable. sp sorry
Besides looking after your invalid father, what is your major malfunction, Ted? Why always such sarcasm? I won’t board the TCM cruise with you.
He may be getting tired of your toxicity, crying wolf and the fact that you don’t get the help you need.
It is about abusive men and the author has made it free many places. Lundy Bancroft.
I don’t care if Bob does kill me. So much for the social equity I thought I had built here.
Bacon, I am woozily ill with obvious signs and both my mother and Bob refuse to take me anywhere. I do not feel up to taking myself and have said so.
I live with two solipsist malignant narcissists, and even typing this exhausts me.
Toxteth – I’ve been at work since this morning, and through late tonight for me. I’ll be giving you a call and I’ll keep my word and talk to Yusef.
I’m probably the only one here who isn’t writing you off with cause. So it’s up to you if you want to engage.
Sounds like a nightmare.
Glad you are doing better.
It was a rough stretch. I did drink away many of those memories, though, and this all happened in Korea! It doesn’t *really* count cuz no one remembers!
The “live in interesting times” curse aside, my life really has been quite exciting. I’m working on putting my own Act III together with some stability, hopefully most hopefully with my own little gal to share it with.
*suspiciously eyes MN Munchkin and our Cedar Rapids vacation plans* <– (That *may* get fierce. In several ways.)
Damn.
That’s all I have to say about that.
I’ve burned up a few times trying to navigate society post-Incident, but this was the most dramatic and necessary of ’em. According to Mom, “[I] couldn’t be stopped” from returning to Korea so soon. *shrug* Live, learn, etc. This premature re-entry (teehee!) is well timed for my more positive re-entry into the workforce on Monday! In five min, I’m also reconnecting with a fairly big honcho in the Indiana Libertarian Party, whom I ‘worked’ with all of SIXTEEN(!) years ago, right before I went to Korea for the very first time.
This ‘Joker’ is pretty much my last downer, as I figured it best to get it out of the way so new readers get my character, the setting and surroundings. I’ve got some thoughts, but time for a Zoom!
At least you learned what not to do the first time, but the COVID totalitarians sure made everything more difficult for you.
Gotta say, COVID sucked for everyone. But waking up ‘fresh’ to the rest of the world’s panic was, uh. Unfortunate timing! It was predictably baffling how the whole world caved to a (designed) and artificially exaggerated danger.
Me as Health Tyrant: “Sick? Stay at home. Maybe get to a hospital. The rest of y’all? Enjoy shorter lines! Questions? Nope, that’s it. Peace!’
Your optimism has to be a huge part of your resiliency. It’s a bit catching on have to say. Gives me some hope.
The masking madness cued me into just how deaf I was, I realized how much I relied on reading lips as well.
That ‘lack’ of lip-reading was profoundly uncomfortable. Frankly, it was for everyone, but I’m glad I’m not alone when masks made me realize how ‘deaf’ I kinda was. That was an extra shitty thing Maskers unnecessarily burdened us all with, those fucking bastards. I was profoundly angry at The Man (and The Korean Man) for feeling so positive about it all.
I hope optimism catches on! Most people are fools who ‘choose’ to sink into every bit of negativity they see, which means they start hunting for even more shit to fill their Nastiness Basket with, cuz, like, duh! It’s always gotta be full! (I’m sure that was useful back when, but now we’re surrounded by a preposterous abundance of food and safety? Bitches still gonna bitch.)
My pessimism hasn’t let me down yet, but I’m sure it will eventually.
But are you positive it will?
I have faith that Nick has more good happening than he acknowleges.
I think we’re a bad influence on him.
Stay away from electronic devices for a bit, reflect,
Like you every morning, UCS?
I’m fine once the afternoon rolls round.
I operate on a fairly depressive level.
Choosing to be happy and positive is a habit I’ve been working on for decades.
Threedoor: whenever you’re feeling down, remember that my music links make everyone happy.
Ted, I get exposed to quite a bit of new to me music here. Late Gen X so I missed a lot of the late 70s early 80s stuff.
I think optimism/pessimism is a powerful character trait. I’m not sure if it can be learned? There’s always something positive in everything. May be trivial or even a BAD thing, but a positive spin can almost always be imparted. (“Oh, the humanity!” Well. Folk learned there were safer, better options that taking a balloon across the Atlantic. (Does sound fun, though.)) Munch does the opposite, and I think being raised an abused orphan sort of burned that into her. (No sarcasm, good job on her brain, cuz, I’m sure that wariness helped her.)
“Acceptance” is also a friend, but not to be taken lightly. Got in that habit with that with booze. AND! I’m not sure the exact date, but I’m right at 1-year sober! Huh! Time sure do fly. Also means I’ve had the Kia Sportage for ~11mo now.
I think it can be learned.
I also think it’s somewhat ingrained.
Repetition makes habit.
Habit can run on autopilot.
I think good habits are harder to instill in yourself than bad ones.
This is an interesting conversation. I’m not exactly sure if I’m one or the other. My mind can get catastrophizing and I’ll get very pessimistic (that’s been happening a lot lately). But I can also hit rock bottom and come back up optimistic. If I have even one tiny sliver of hope, it can be enough to get me though very tough times.
I guess I’m normally optimistic but prone to spirals of pessimism.
Holy shit, dude.
I assume not when you were supposed to be in quarantine.
I don’t think so, pretty sure I didn’t. I’d say that year in Korea, I’d estimate between 6-10 ER trips? I fully believe, after I left Thailand in Dec. 2019, I’ve drunk myself into every seizure I’ve had. I have had ‘foggy’ symptoms, warning signs, sans alcohol, but not many without the hooch.
A proper reboot would take longer than anticipated.
I was thinking that throughout the whole article.
Best wishes.
Work Monday! I was out-competed by the other new hire at the escrow reboot, but it’s nuts to have another, theoretically easier, landing Sept. 14. Enough $ for my own place if I gel with their system, and pretty legit room for advancement.
Back in America June 2022, Peru Tribune til June ’23; ’24 was my phlebotomy attempt; ’25 was Walmart; add in Meijer later and a couple standardized test contracts before escrow… at least I learned some things along the way, like how to stab reprobates for their essence while getting paid for it! (Pie does his shit for free. Slacker.)
*fingers crossed* T-Minus ~3.3 days!
Steve Smith stab you for his essence!
So would you say this was a case of premature evacuation?
Out of curiosity have you tried a weighted blanket or something like that when the tremors come on? I think that is supposed to be soothing.
“He should get a fat chick to lay on him.”
-Tres
Probably.
That’s too much weight.
Even a skinny chick weighs too much (and would be less evenly distributed)
So the weight is oddly distributed?
I mean…it’s always worked for me
The tremors in my left hand are pretty constant. If I’m doing anything or focus, they don’t come up. If I fully relax, though, yeah, there’s always a minor quibble in that hand. If they go up to my elbow or into my right hand, I know I need to chill, lay down, perhaps take my Nayzilam, a Narcan-like nasal spray, to quell a possible seizure. (That shit is like snorting wasabi. Regardless of if it works, it gets your attention. (I think that’s how it works.)
I don’t remember them getting bigger. By the time they do, I’m having a seizure and Brain flips the Memory Switch off.
I’d really, really, really like a fat chick to lay on me. Perhaps for other reasons, but I ain’t too picky. (I also weighed in at 125 this morning, so my definition of ‘fat’ is likely much smaller than y’alls’. (C’mon R.J. This is your cue. Bring on the skinny alien chicks!)
In honor of Brazilian immigrants to this country, we should add a new ethnic holiday. Right there with Columbus Day, St Pattys, Cinco de Drinko, and Grammarteenth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festa_dos_Confederados
Look, there’s 193 or so countries, plus smaller ethnic groups and religions, we’ll run out of calendar days if we keep handing out holidays.
Wow that’s messed up. I never heard of it.
Makes sense.
Brazil had multiple times the number of slaves as the U.S., those confederates knew how to operate the system. It’s likely they were invited to Brazil by the government and plantation owners.
Winner winner picanha dinner!
Note to self: do not tease Evan about rebooting. Do not mention jacking in and jacking out. Don’t do it.
How about jacking off?
I just cannot believe you men (or women). Do you hear yourselves? Do you not have wives, daughters, mothers? You like them to get shoved four times, let alone once? I am risking my life by typing this.
To hell with this site. BYE. Fucking victim-blamers.
He threatens to murder me daily, drop me off a bridge. (CA Penal Code SS 422.) Yall so in love with this man?
My Okie uncle sold him two handguns, a Kimber and a Walther. I forget which is the 38 v the 45. Man cannot even pronounce W.
Yall do not care about me, so why should I?
“I’m being physically abused and assaulted!”
“But don’t send the cops, assholes.”
“And I can’t leave, so stop telling me that.”
“WHY DON’T YOU PEOPLE CARE?!”
Feet are hard to use.
[ Kevin nods knowingly ]
Oh, Ted. 🙂
I’m tellin’ ya: mute, and then just read the replies, is the way to go.
Everybody is a victim if THEY WANT TO BE.
As for these ‘chapters’ 1 and 2 of my little project, how does this and Crest Quest (toothbrush /hospital story) read? Got the junky bits out of the way as quickly as I could, and I hope it’s still upbeat enough to be a fun read for newcomers. You guys know more of the story, so I also hope I included enough gunk to explain my situation to the readers. (I think it was wise to highly sanitize the pictures on that last one, but it’s always tempting to show my brain being actively removed.)
I’m glad it came naturally, unforced, but I hope none of this resembles anything somber. Wasn’t tremendously easy to write these, but not for reasons one might expect. I’m trying to keep these at under 1500 words, and it’s hard to think of what to focus on and what to edit out. 🤔 🤔 (<– They disagree about what to disagree about. (So do I!))
I’m not judging and your life is your life, but I certainly hope you gave up the booze. It’s not worth it.
I just him for his fecal covered fingers all day everyday.
Poor Rapunzel. The wicked witch is holding her prisoner in that tower, with nary a knight in sight.