So I now require regular charging and need to avoid roundhouse kicks to the chin…

With the first probe nestled into its target location. Rob picked up my forearm – testing for rigidity. Amazingly, he could pick up some relaxing of tone immediately – even before the current had been switched on – a ‘leshioning effect’. He then slowly paced me through increasing levels of electricity being emitted by the electrode.

We needed to determine just how much amperage it would take to have a significant improvement – and how much I could handle before incapacitating side effects gripped me and made life unbearable.  Rob started the ball rolling with 0.3mA. A tingling sensation, almost pleasant and not unlike a very mild pins and needles, surrounded my right foot.

Rob explained that when first turned on, the electricity can pulse a little, emitting more electricity before settling down.  We waited patiently for 30 seconds to make sure it passed, and obligingly it began fading immediately. My right arm loosened. He asked me to make a fist with my left hand – which should not usually have an effect on your right side. However for me, this action of making a fist in one hand would always turn the other arm into that of the ‘tin man’ patiently awaiting Dorothy – at the mercy of the elements; with the oil can mockingly just out of reach.

I gave Mary a squeeze.

Rob’s smile confirmed what I could already feel. Still loose. I was beginning to enjoy myself. As we climbed through 2, 4, 6mA… I felt better and better.

It’s working.

This is amazing!

At each increment Rob had me concentrate on my body – carefully trying to take note of any difference, the smallest patch of numbness or tingling. We would then run through speech exercises to ensure I wasn’t suffering any impediment, which can be a common side effect when stimulating this part of the brain.

“Puh, puh, puh..me, me, me..kay, kay, kay…British constitution”.

Some finger co-ordination: touching my own finger tips together in sequence; touch his finger, touch my nose, finger, nose, finger, nose. 

Finally my eye-tracking. “Keep your eyes on my finger, Todd”. His outstretched pointer finger leading my eyeballs, left then right, then left again. Too easy. Keep on cranking up the voltage!

Though, as life often relishes in reminding us, ‘all good things must come to an end.’

As we progressed further towards 8mA, I noticed the temperature climb. Subtly at first. Then exponentially. I broke into sweat and my confidence and comfort level came screaming back down to earth, crashing through the surface and tunneling towards the molten core.

“Please stop,” I begged as my plastic safety goggles fogged up.

Rob tried to reassure me, “We’re nearly finished”.

These following seconds were tough. At the time I couldn’t comprehend why they wouldn’t just turn the electrode off. But my feedback was providing Rob with further detail to triangulate the most perfect final location of the electrode. He hurriedly put me through my tests. 

“Puh, puh, puh..me, me, me..kay, kay, kay…British constitution”.

It sounded as though this ‘Energiser bunny’ was given inferior batteries.

Finger….Nose…. Finger…Nose. Not sure if it is sweat or tears sliding down my flushed cheeks.

“Follow my finger.” 

My eyes lagged with buffering akin to Netflix on the NBN. 

Not for the first time, nor the last, today – I was left pondering Einstein’s theory of relativity. Surely it had been minutes or hours of discomfort not the seconds that the devious clock suggested.

Then miraculously, the oven switched off abruptly, as the electricity eased back and then switched off completely.

That was intense. I had no emotional capacity to feel anything other than relief. Though a glimmer of concern must have been alight in a dark corner somewhere in my mind.

‘Is this blindness going to be permanent?’ I wondered as I tried unsuccessfully to make out some faces in the room. I could not clear the fog that had engulfed the theatre. Like a mysterious mist hiding all manner of monsters, limited only to my imagination.

Something approached me from the left. If I could move my head, I might have shimmied back in fear. The sweat that my body had delivered so efficiently in its attempt to cool me seconds earlier, now clung to me like a damp, cold sheet. My shivering brought on shaking. Not a minute ago I was desperate to be released from the torment of being on fire. Now I shook, freezing cold and blind.

I could sense the figure reaching out toward my head, yet I was powerless to defend myself. I squeezed Mary once more and relented. 

My anaesthetist lifted my goggles and I could smell the alcohol on the wipe, and as if with Jesus’ own spit and dirt combo; he cleared the fog on my plastic safety goggles and instructed for warm air to be blown between my sheets of a pretty amazing operating table.

“Okay, that’s the test probe done.” Rob’s face now as clear as ever. “Time to do it all again with the permanent electrode. Nearly half-way there Todd!” 

The lights in the theatre blinked off, minimising any electrical interference and allowing for the best possible signals to be picked up by the equipment. As Matt once more positioned the electrode; this time, the one destined to become one with my brain; as my body, over time, would coat it with proteins,encouraging it to assimilate with the brain matter around it; and like a migrant worker completing their citizenship exam, it will become a welcome, functioning part of the whole.

Having a good indication from the first test probe. Rob was able to move quickly through the tolerable range of electricity, and before long I was back at my limits.

It grew hotter. Sweat emanated from every pore. My speech slowed. My eye tracking failed. So tired. 

Once again, the odour of the alcohol wipe acted as smelling salts and my alertness lifted in harmony with the fog.

“Time to switch sides Todd. Matt will lock that lead in place and then there will need to be some more drilling”.

“Beautiful.” I lied – to myself more than anyone – although I was glad to see a few mouths turn slightly upward at the corners. One of the first management lessons I learned was “a happy worker is a good worker” -sage advice.

Despite the challenge of using different technology for the first time; Matt had my lead locked in place in no time. The pneumatic drill whirred to life.

A jet engine doesn’t quite describe the drilling in the right side of my skull. Instead the image of a helicopter comes to mind.

Still, I was left without ear protection and my head was being forced against the rotor mast.

This time there was room for more than only vibration and noise…

I have a filling in a molar at the top, right side of my jaw. I could feel it wriggle free.

The vibration and noise, though overwhelming to the senses, seemed to take a back seat, as every past negative dentist experience flooded my mind, mingling and moulding into a ball of orthodontic terror. That all too familiar pain of an exposed nerve radiated through my jaw up to the point of drilling and seemingly down through my body, yet also left and right. Like the points of a compass. I grimaced, and felt – rather than saw – my aneasthetist’s concern raise a notch as he edged closer.

Vibration, noise, shooting nerve pain…and then finally; silence.

“What’s the matter Todd?” The empathetic eyes of my anaesthetist, peering over his surgical mask added a mystical, almost telepathic quality to his question.

“I think I lost a filling.”

Although I was being honest, the absurdity of the moment yanked my sense of humour from behind the dark curtain in my mind; where it momentarily had retreated, curled itself up in a fetal position and rocked back and forth. I smiled and pushed the lingering pain from my thoughts, so very thankful to be untethered from the Boeing CH-47 Chinook.

The test probe was in place before I knew it, and Rob was once again walking me through the various tests, as the technician amped up the electrode.

Something was wrong.

My back arched, unnaturally. I grimaced with discomfort and I could hear myself begging for Rob to halt the procedure. As a feeling that I can only describe as that of fingernails dragging across the surface of a chalkboard (only amplified perhaps 100 fold)  gripped me and for perhaps the first time I questioned whether this had all been the wrong choice. Rob squeezed my left hand and instructed for the technician to roll back the power, and as that most disturbing feeling graciously subsided, I became aware that I had lost my grip of Mary in my right hand.

I was left completely depleted. Physically and emotionally. I desperately wanted to yield to the building black thunderclouds of fatigue that had been storming toward me from the horizon. Once again, Rob intervened. He guided me to reserves I didn’t know existed, as he patiently explained what had happened.

My wonderfully unique, asymmetrical brain includes a subthalamic nucleus that is considerably smaller on the right side than the left. This region of the brain is surrounded by a bank of fibres and our brave scout electrode, had found itself nestled into these fibres causing the excruciating discomfort.

“This is why we want you to be awake Todd. Nothing on the scanners could have alerted us to what you were feeling. From your MRI data the electrode was perfectly positioned.”

I shuddered with disbelief at the thought of waking up with that feeling, and the fear and misunderstanding that would have been just as unbearable.

Matt and Rob then discussed very briefly the new co-ordinates, and buoyed by a deep sense of relief I shook off the fatigue and stepped forward with them, finally with an accurate understanding of what Rob had meant by me being an active participant in this surgery.

With the test probe farewelled, replaced by the second new permanent addition to my brain. The lights flickered off and I was once again treated to the very rare and remarkable audio experience that is listening to my own brain’s electrical activity.

Fatigue now clawed at the door, finding cracks and boring holes; determined to break through. My eyes struggled to stay open as I failed to follow Rob’s finger for the last time, my speech slurred and my co-ordination left my control. We had reached the limit.

Rob smiled, thrilled with the result; as Matt once again got to work with tidying up. Locking the lead into place, before placing my scalp back into position and stapling me up. 

The white hot pain of a staple biting into place reminded me that my work here was done. There was no need for me to be conscious for the remainder of the procedure – they still needed to connect the wires down through my neck to a computer and battery in my chest just like Tony Stark.😉

“Do I need to be feeling this?” I enquired of Matt, who answered by calling out to my anaesthetist …

“KNOCK HIM OUT!”