He remains fascinated by the brain. “Working with it teaches you about suffering, and the unpredictability of life, that the more we know about the brain, the more we realize we don’t understand. We are still scratching the surface.”

A neurosurgeon comments on his work

Scratching the surface is what I have been doing for the past 45 months. I have been an experiment of one in the unpredictability of life and all of those ineluctable aspects we still do not understand.

I have been trying to reduce my own unpredictability but without great success. Here is what I have learned as I bumbled about, scratching the surface of the unknown.

A key reason I enjoy the volunteer work is it provides an opportunity to once again be among people. Apart from the volunteer coordinator, I have told no one of the injury. I want simply to fit in, to be one of the group, a “normal” person, to manifest whatever that term may imply. Dr D has diagnosed me with moderate Asperger’s. This was not present prior to the injury. One consequence of this is that I tend to have Dr Spock like interactions with some of the other staff and volunteers. I am unsure of how to handle this other than noting each incident, reflecting on ways to avoid such interactions, and exerting myself to learn to do better.

For the first time in a very long time, I encountered an interesting woman. We spoke after a long night of work and then we walked uptown together to the office pub party. We both have sons of the same age. Between the two of us, we have accumulated over 120 years on the surface of this unpredictable globe. In the course of our short walk to the pub, it became apparent we share similar no nonsense perceptions, an awareness likely born of those long years of observation.

But life’s unpredictability reared its head once we entered the pub. I had not been planning to attend the party; I had walked entranced in conversation, had brought no money, had not drunk any alcohol in the past four years. The setting was noisy and alien and I found myself lost and overwhelmed. I left abruptly, without thought. It was not until I escaped to the quiet of the street that I realized I had walked away from a most intelligent conversational partner, summarily abandoning her by my unexplained lurch for the exit. And I have no idea how to explain all of this to her, or how to make amends.

I find I make an increasing number of errors as the day wears on. It is as if my brain is running out of fuel, that the work drains the available mental horsepower. Dr H advises that I am overloading myself and I need to pace myself better.

There was further problem at the end of the week. I walked home tired and drained and overloaded, glad of the fact that the following day was a Saturday and I could focus on other aspects of life. Normally I find it impossible to sleep in past 0730. But on this Saturday, I slept to 1100 and then spent the remainder of the day attending to chores.

It was not until the next day that I discovered it was once again Saturday. Even on an unpredictable planet, two Saturdays in a row is a rare and unusual event. I had somehow mistaken Friday for Saturday and without realizing it had completely blown off an entire day, a day which included a scheduled appointment with Dr D. I was completely humiliated by this error and by my earlier departure from the pub. Life is unpredictable enough without me inflicting my error on others.

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The opening quote is taken from a National Post story reporting on the life of a UK neurosurgeon. The full story may be found here.