Last week, my old neurologist was killed in a car accident. He and his wife were driving to a chronic pain conference when their car hit a patch of water on the highway, hydroplaned off the shoulder, and rolled over. He was thrown onto the roadside.
This is the doctor who gave me my first EEG, who closed his eyes as I walked across the shiny tiles in his examining room, listening for a Parkinsonian shuffle, and who tried every diagnostic test in his playbook - EEG, MRI, Evoked Potential Studies, etc. All to find out what was causing my seizures. And failing that, to find their focus, or the area inside my brain where they begin.
As a teenager, I hated him. He had these huge, bulging eyes that always seemed fixed on my nose, and when I answered his questions, he drifted off, sometimes staring into the tacky painting that hung behind my head. I don't remember his voice, but I remember the cold tips of his fingers, as he tested my nerve responses by touching different parts of my arms and legs.
Last night, I dreamt about his body by the side of the road. A team of neurologists jumped out of an ambulance and stuck electrodes to his scalp. This man needs an EEG one of them screamed. They used the police sirens as makeshift flashing lights, and they made sure to give him CPR too fast, to mimic hyperventilation. When they were finished, they gathered around the printout and read his brainwaves. See, they told him, there's nothing wrong. You're not dead. Your brainwaves spiked when the police lights flashed.
Comments (5)
I want to read more and more of your dreams!
The rememberance of specific sentences spoken by others in dreams always intrigues me. So of course, reading "You're not dead. Your brainwaves spiked when the police lights flashed" hit me hard. It sounds like the ending of a poem to me.
Posted by wendy | July 24, 2003 10:19 AM
Posted on July 24, 2003 10:19
I agree with Wendy, Karrie. This whole thing reads very much like a poem.
Posted by Dewi | July 24, 2003 4:29 PM
Posted on July 24, 2003 16:29
Damn, that's spooky. (Shudder.)
Posted by Michael J. Totten | July 24, 2003 6:01 PM
Posted on July 24, 2003 18:01
Ive enjoyed your graceful vignettes...your scene takes on a jump cut adjoining moment to this parallel life: my parents neighbor, a neurologist, tells my mom about a story-the death of his friend (also a neurologist in Iowa). The friends were driving to Chicago. It was getting late, the wife didnt want to drive anymore, so the husband said Ill drive, pull over. So she started pulling over on the county highway, while he took off his seatbelt, and started reaching for the door handle. As he assumed the truck would stop, the door-opened now-reeled him out as the truck went too far off into the ditch, and rolled, resulting in his death.
The super-sonic frequency of this story strikes me. The versions of this story emanate to the West coast (which is where I also live). This reassures that life always happens faster than the story...and stories are a way for us to slow down life.
Thanks for adding to the journey....
Posted by Tricia Louvar | July 25, 2003 9:39 AM
Posted on July 25, 2003 09:39
...the mystery of the hydroplane....i used to think it was fun to hydroplane....much like the crowned road, it was one of those things in driver's ed that i thought was only in the books for city people....i was never afraid of them until i moved to portland where the freeways all have a groove etched out where the winter tires ride....you can hydroplane forever on those roads....and careen straight into a semi....i have no horror stories of hydroplaning...but i do have one about purposely fishtailing....also a dangerous country past time....
Posted by dj julio | July 25, 2003 4:24 PM
Posted on July 25, 2003 16:24