An Unexpected Development
My Brain on Pause
A strange thing happened one week ago today. My brain suddenly stopped functioning properly. Or it stopped communicating properly with my mouth. Or something. I don’t know the biological specifics. I just know that I can no longer speak the way I used to speak—fluidly, easily. What was, for most of my life, effortless, has suddenly become effortful.
I have a small aneurysm in the anterior communicating artery, which is apparently quite common, no cause for alarm, and may have been hiding out in my brain for years without causing any problems. There is no bleeding in my brain. I can walk normally, though at times my steps feel sluggish or otherworldly, as if I’m wandering through fog, a fog that has a physical weight and strange properties of resistance.
I am not dizzy. I do not have blurred vision. My face is not falling. What I mean to say is this: the doctors do not think I had a stroke. That is reassuring. (Also reassuring: my new novel is done and dusted, on its way to page proofs, and on my publisher’s calendar for January. The book will be a book, no matter what).
In the last week, I’ve been admitted to the ER twice, visited urgent care once, and had an appointment with a general internist as well. I’ve had an MRA and an MRI. Tomorrow, I will see a neurosurgeon, and after that I will see a neurologist.
This is a lot of intervention and discussion for an organ I’ve rarely discussed with anyone before: my brain. The only exception is a period about twenty years ago when I visited a neurologist about migraines. The neurologist, who had a glamour shot of himself on his office wall, cheerfully showed me a 3-D model of a brain, regaled me with stories of the hippocampus, and told me to stop drinking so much coffee. I followed his advice about coffee for a few weeks and then returned to my usual habits. Of course, I put the migraines and the neurologist in a book, as one does. Eventually the migraines subsided.
I have spent my entire adult life as a writer, an occupation for which I’ve done hundreds of hours of public speaking. I’ve loved public speaking since I was a teenager. The bigger the crowd, the better. I rarely plan what I’m going to say. I like interacting with the audience, expanding or compressing the narrative depending on the mood and the moment. Winging it comes naturally.
Or it did.
Suddenly, I can’t even get through a coffee order without stuttering, speaking very slowly, or both. It feels as though I’m dragging my words through deep water. A one-minute conversation leaves me physically and mentally exhausted.
I ventured yesterday to a coffee shop and a pizza joint to test my speech in low-stakes environments. Again today to a different coffee shop. I’ve had telephone conversations about unrelated matters, with strangers. In every case, just when I think I’m getting through a sentence, something happens. My brain hits a roadblock. I can hear words coming out of my mouth that sound wrong. If I take a deep breath, I can speak very quickly on the out-breath, getting all the words out in a row. But it feels less like speaking and more like letting air out of a tire. Inside that air are my words.
But also: The stutter comes and goes. I have conversations during which I speak as I always did, if perhaps a bit more slowly.
During my senior year of college, I sat across the desk from my writing professor in a spacious office in Morgan Hall at the University of Alabama. He was the director of the creative writing program. He had ginger hair, a ginger beard, and a gruff manner. Most of the students were a little afraid of him. He had recently returned to work after an aneurysm. We were discussing a short story I’d written for class. He pointed vaguely at his desk and said, “Can you hand me that—”
He couldn’t come up with the final word of the sentence. The final word was pen.
My professor, a writer and a teacher of writing, could not recall the word for pen. It struck me then. It strikes me now.