Just after Mr. P had checked on me and phoned my wife (I could hear him talking to her on the phone), one of the nurses looking after me in the recovery room came to see me. I was thinking about my wife and the fact that she’d be on her way to see me. I can honestly say I’ve never yearned to see someone so much in my life! The nurse asked me if I wanted any painkillers. My head was starting to hurt a little, but it wasn’t unbearably bad. I’d been warned before the operation that it would likely be painful and I felt pleased that it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I asked her what I could have and she said “either paracetamol, codeine or morphine”. I judged the pain to be worse than mere paracetamol level, but didn’t like the sound of taking morphine. It didn’t feel so bad as to warrant that, plus I had this overwhelming feeling that I’d just spent the last 8 hours being pumped full of...

the music might set you free….. Shalabi Effect - Beauty Queen Crime Scene;
Oneohtrix Point Never - Sleep Dealer;
Lukid - Manchester;
Geoff Mullen - 02 Untitled (Bongo Closet Part 2) (except);
Mike Weis - Loop Current, part 3;
Shigeto - Olivia;
David Andree, Josh Mason - A Beacon, Peace and a Steambath;
Demdike Stare - Hashshashin;
Four Tet - Aerial;
Laurel Halo - Still/Dromos;
The Field - No. No….;
Balmorhea - Coahuila (The Fun Years Remix); Go here to the start of the journey. Go here for next blog entry. Go here for previous blog entry.

Before I start this post I want to acknowledge 2 things. Firstly, it’s likely to be a long one. I ask for forgiveness for any sense of self indulgence. Secondly, (and in part the reason for the length) I’m about to try and describe an experience which on many levels is beyond words, certainly beyond my ability to articulate. This is the stuff that only Vulcan mind-melds could really do justice to! In the run up to my brain surgery I met with 3 truly remarkable people. The first was Mr. P, the neuro-scientist who was to perform the actual operation and attempt to remove my tumour. I’d already read up about him and discovered he was a very gifted and well respected surgeon. He was also 42, the same age as me. I’m very fortunate that I’ve been lucky enough to meet many unique and talented people during my life, but here I was, sitting in front of a real life brain surgeon. I felt humbled...

Maybe because of the type of work I (used to / will again?) do, or maybe just because of the type I person I am, I have spent a lot of time in my life thinking about what it is I will do. At work I call this ‘prioritization’. I’ve always seen prioritization as a process of working through decreasing subsets of potential candidates of action. For me, I’ve essentially visualized this as a (fairly) straightforward 3-step sequence. To start of with, there is the ultimate ‘super-set’ of all possibilities. This is borne from a master list of ‘things you might do’. This list, particularly in our western and essentially capitalist society, is supposed to be theoretically infinite and only constrained by the limits of our imagination. I think this is particularly important in a capitalist environment because in order to maintain the ‘buy-in’ that we all must have to maintain the system, we have...

I’ve often found that much of my perception of life can be articulated and described in sets of 3. The emotional landscape that I found myself now was no different. On a basic primal level there was firstly an underlying, unsophisticated fear of death. I’ve been finding this the least hard aspect of the experience to understand, but the most troublesome to overcome in the struggle to ‘live’ with my new reality. A layer up there is a more intellectualized domain of thought concerned with loss. By that I mean me coming to terms with the anticipated loss of my own ‘life’, not physical death, but acceptance of a need to let go of everything from planned and desired experiences through to mechanisms of autonomy long granted for granted (like not being able to drive for instance). At this point this ‘letting go’ is not because I’ve somehow immediately transitioned to a point where I’ve fully...

Like in a darkened room…. Go here to the start of the journey. Go here for next blog entry. Go here for previous blog entry

Despite my emerging secret theory of hope, I was absolutely terrified on the trip to Oxford the following week. The previous two meetings with Dr. B. had genuinely traumatized me and I was dreading the possibility of a similar meeting with more yet bad news. My wife came with me and we did our best to keep the mood light on the drive to the hospital but I could tell she was feeling the same way. We arrived at the neuroscience outpatients department very early so stopped for a quick coffee before going up to the appointment. Once our appointment time arrived we didn’t had to wait long before we were called in to meet Dr. L who was accompanied by a specialist oncology nurse, Nurse. G. If, like me, you do or have ever worked in a corporate environment, you would have recognized the format of the ‘meeting’ immediately and I knew I was in trouble. In the corporate world these types of...

From the first seizure to the initial diagnosis of ‘some sort of brain tumour’ had only taken 6 days. It was nearly another two weeks from that point to the next discussion in Oxford. Apart from the daily seizures (slowly being quietened by medication) and continuing daily deterioration in my speech, not much happened. I had been told I shouldn’t drive and was off work due to the seizures but else-wise life continued within my family as it had to - my son went to school, daughter to nursery and we all did our best to hold onto some level of normality in daily life. I gave myself a day after the initial diagnosis discussion with Dr. B to ‘stare into the headlights’ but the day after starting reading as much as I could to find about brain tumours. I found out that there are many different types of brain tumours, and it makes a big difference to what it means dependent on which one you...

I’d had two encounters with Epilepsy in my life before. The first was when I was a boy; a close friend (and I’m happy to say one of my oldest friends still today) had epilepsy and I was somewhat aware of the fact it was an issue for him, I particularly remembered his worries when he started driving as to how it posed a threat if it should resurface. The second was much more recently with my sister’s daughter. She was diagnosed with sleep epilepsy which was a long, several year battle for them. Finally medication was established that thankfully normalized their lives. Despite both these experiences, I guess it is the nature of the human condition that we don’t have the real capacity to appreciate some things without experiencing them ourselves. A dear friend wrote to me recently about what was happening to me and he said “I suppose all of us have our blinkers on, to some degree or...

Esmerine - Dalmak;
godspeed you! black emperor - Slow Riot;
godspeed you! black emperor - Blaise Bailey;
Julianna Barwick - Florine;
Set Fire To Flames - rites of spring reverb;
Pausal - Fertiliser / Horticulture / Mower;
Tim Hecker - Mort Aux Vaches (except);
Mike Weis - Loop Current, part 2;
Laurel Halo - Ainnome;
Four Tet - Kool FM;
Neil Landstrumm - Assassin Master;
Neil Landstrumm - The Race;
David Andree, Josh Mason - (In); Go here to the start of the journey. Go here for next blog entry.
Go here for previous blog entry