I will grant you that this may be the most ridiculous blog entry title I’ve ever written, but it’s not without logic.
After gathering plenty of data from having seizures last week, Monday was all about stimulation testing: sending small electric charges into my brain through the electrodes that had been implanted when I first arrived at the hospital. Each electrode had maybe seven different places that could produce a charge; since each place in the electrode was next to a slightly different place in the brain, each could have a different effect. For each test, they’d indicate the location on an electrode, then 2, 4, 6, or 8 (I think that referred to the number of microvolts being applied). Each small charge would last for five seconds and then I’d do my best to explain what the heck just happened.
The first half of testing was a flashback to neuropsychology testing, but I felt quite a bit different this time around. On Friday, I knew everything was simple and I should have been able to identify whatever showed up on the iPad, so not being able to say “funnel” or “clipboard” would make me upset, resulting in a number of seizures in a short period of time. I knew there might be similar issues this time around, but if it happened, it was extremely unlikely that I was the reason why. It would be because of something done to me. The brain has its own electrical signals that are constantly firing—if adding an extra little zap causes things to misfire, there’s absolutely nothing I can do but sit back and marvel at the intricate workings of the human brain.
And that’s essentially what happened. We started with essays that might have been used for children’s standardized testing. They’d indicate the electrode and level 2, I’d start to read about how wool is used to make sweaters and they might stop me after a few sentences. (Not everything we tested affected my language abilities…) They’d go to levels 4, 6, and 8, record the results, then move to the next location on the electrode. They’d indicate level 2, I’d start reading… this time, I might stumble over my words a little bit. Move to level 4, start reading… then I had to stop because the words on the page weren’t making sense. For five seconds. Levels 6 and 8, same result, then move to the next test.
The worst part about that portion of the testing? We moved from wool sweaters to an essay about the moon landing, but I only finished reading about half of it before we moved on to some different testing, so I may never know if the astronauts made it from the moon back to Earth.
I had to identify more images (say “This is a” and what the image was) and I had a few failures, but again, I never got upset. Why? Because if we reached a point when I struggled and the doctors were satisfied with that electrode location and the level of charge applied, they’d do an “s-trial.” The next image: “This is a hammer.” No hesitation. It wasn’t until later that I asked what “s-trial” meant. They said it was a sham trial. When a charge was applied, I couldn’t identify a simple image; when they ran a sham trial and didn’t apply a charge, zero issues. Like I said, there was absolutely nothing I could have done to change the results—something being done to me was causing the failures—so there was no reason to be angry about the test.
There were also some sections of nonsense words, but it wasn’t as smooth as the last time around. On Friday, they weren’t words that I might be unable to recognize at any given moment, so I just had to mimic the sounds. Piece of cake. This time around, applying a charge meant I couldn’t always hear noises as clearly as I’d expected. Sometimes I could repeat the nonsense word with no problem. Sometimes… it was like the sound was muffled. I might be able to repeat the word, but I might pause for just an instant (almost as if deciding whether I heard it accurately or not) or finish the word and end with “… at least I think that’s what it was.” And there was times when I was wrong. I listened, repeated it as closely as I could, but it wasn’t identical. They’d tell me and we’d move to the next step, whether that be an increased charge, a different section of an electrode or an s-trial.
I hadn’t planned on making this a two-part blog post, but what I’ve written so far was just the first part of testing. The neuropsychologist said that he was satisfied, he and his assistant packed up, said goodbye, then all of the doctors left the room to talk in the hallway for a while as I took a break, a nurse sitting near the door came over and handed me some water to drink, then it was just a matter of time before the remaining testers came back into the room and it was time to get back to work.