an investigation into information: how and what formulates in our brains.

a personal account of how information had arisen in my brain.

background

i have central neurocytoma (cn), a benign brain tumour, that was diagnosed at changi general hospital around 10th october 2024, thursday. the illness is very rare but most commonly found in 20s and 30s regardless of gender; and i was 28 years old in 2024. i found out when i woke up around 7:40am on 9th october 2024, wednesday, for work and my entire world view was spinning. to the point that i couldn't sit up. i laid back down in bed, shouted for my family, and asked them to call for an emergency ambulance.

in case for further research purposes, i am male, my job is a backend software engineer, and born and raised in singapore.

and?

this article is a blend of a personal account and analysis of how i regained and make sense of information arisen in my brain after the first operation of neuroendoscopy on 7th november 2024 and the second procedure of gamma knife radiosurgery on 17th december 2024. i won't get into my pain unless i find it relevant to the subject matter.

after neuroendoscopy, 7th november 2024

hospitalisation from 6th to 14th november 2024

i woke up to my 2 of my 3 siblings and the anesthesiologist beside me at the critical care ward. the anesthesiologist explained because i was a frequent heavy drinker, my liver was active than most, so he needed to pump a lot more anesthesia into my body throughout the operation. thankfully, the operation only lasted 2hr 45mins. he stood by and asked questions to check on my condition post surgery. i could comprehend what he said and responded with only 'yes' and 'no's. i quickly forgot the questions he asked after i responded, and went back to sleep.

in the critical care unit, i was too weak to get out of bed so i laid the entire time. my brain hurt when i sought for entertainment so i simply slept most of the time. the way i communicated with the nurses is either by pointing to certain objects or gesturing with a few simple nouns: 'medicine', 'clock', and 'water'.

after 2-3 days at the critcal care unit, i was moved to a high dependency ward. a less stringent ward because my condition was improving as expected. there, i could consume entertainment and my speech began improving. there was still a layer of blurriness atop my mind throughout my hospitalisation. after a brain surgery, one would have trouble sleeping at night for many months because the brain is repairing itself. idky the brain doesn't want to do that in the day because i was always tired in the day until now. i needed sleeping pills to fall asleep but it was too dangerous for me to consume post surgery until the 5th or 6th day i was there. i watched many shows and rewatch some series that i used to enjoy. there were 2 funny episodes that happened there before sleeping pills was provided to me.

the first was that i needed a fan in the beginning because the air condition was faulty in that ward the first 2 days i moved there. i wanted to tell the nurse to station the fan towards me and oscillate but not let it touch my face. so i called for her at midnight when the air felt stale and tried to speak and gesture to her. i couldn't convey what i desired and was frustrated so i simply stayed calm and asked her to move the fan away.

the second was that i called another nurse and spoke gibberish to her in the middle of the night. i could remember vividly but when i spoke to her, i was in a dazed state. i was telling her about the plot for one of brooklyn nine-nine episodes hahaha and she was stupified by that information hahaha. she simply agreed and left my ward while i slept back.

the following days while i was in the ward, the speech therapist came by and trained my speech there. i could read and comprehend but i couldn't communicate my thoughts like i do now. i would speak in half sentences and broken grammar, with the correct nouns. i attempted writing and my writing was atrocious to my standards. i wrote slowly and my writing was comprehensible to me and others which shouldn't be. i thought, 'those writings were not mine' because my original writing is tall, half-fuck cursive, and illegible to most and sometimes to me as well.

at home, 14th nov 2024 to radiosurgery, 17th dec 2024

i was mostly asleep but i tried to learn machine learning whenever i could. math was easier to learn than languages at this point. once convoluted equations were digestible expressions within my limits then which was 20-30 minutes of screen time before i fell like utter shit again.

i tried to write but i couldn't get my writing back to how it was. it was frustrating to me only but i guess slightly pleasing for others if they wanted to read what i wrote.

i read more books then as well. well, not as many as now, but at least i tried. i relearned words and their pronunciations but could never speak of complex words like, 'juxtaposition' despite knowing when and how to use it. i couldn't express myself besides using simple words in a broken grammar. at least at this stage, i could complete my sentences.

post radiosurgery

i didn't had stability issues until a week after the radiosurgery. the radiation blurred my head further for quite a long period of time. at this point, i had trouble processing for 3-4 months and i could mentally feel a veil over my mind.

during those months, my writing returned. the odd and indiscernible words have returned and i felt joy within. my reading improved and i forget easily. so i simply relearn everything everyday. it was quite a pleasant experience because i enjoy learning at my own terms. what better terms could be called my own besides this circumstance?

to be continued...