Earlier today, I signed up for brain surgery.  Microvascular Decompression.  Not really brain surgery, it just involves shoving the brain around while trying to get to the inside of my face from the back of my skull, which seems to be a strange way to go about it.

I’m going to spend the next few weeks, until the operation, whining to the fucking internet about how I’m going to die during the day-long surgery.  But, first, a little bit of a history.  In pictures!

So, to summarize:

In 1995 I was hit in the jaw by a friend.

This damaged my Trigeminal nerve and, in 1997, I first started to suffer serious Trigeminal Neuralgia.

(Though, apparently, the two are unrelated, and I’m only looking for causes to explain the pain. Trigeminal Neuralgia doesn’t come from trauma, and mine hasn’t behaved that way. But, really, no one knows.  “It’s the $64,000 question – who knows?”)

The pain is extraordinary.  It blinds, shocks, carves, grips, and cripples me.  There is nothing that it can be compared to.

They call it the Suicide Disease.

Everything got a lot worse in 2000, when the pain episodes became intense and untreatable.  Do you know what else got worse in 2000?

Finally, in 2003, I went to the top neurologist in DC.  He’s been real nice and he gives me drugs.  I like drugs. 

But the pain continues, despite the drugs and, sometimes, the drugs don’t help. 

Besides, the drugs are now at such a high dose they’re starting to rule my life.

In 2006, during an extensive and horrific episode, I had a big-time operation where a nice man with a long needle put his boot on my neck and fucked with the nerve.

He failed.

So now I went to Johns Hopkins to see Dr. Ben Carson, who’s like House when it comes to neurosurgery.

We spent all day talking about my situation and he says I’m one of the most extreme cases he’s seen, which was nice because it makes me feel justified for being depressive all these years.

We decided that MVD was the way to go.

They cut into my skull, remove a half-dollar sized circle, push the brain around, and hit the nerve with a jackhammer while talking on a cell phone.

There’s an 80% chance I’ll be cured for life.

But it means a few days in the hospital and six weeks recovery, as well as a titanium plate in my head, loss of hearing in one ear and potential palsy.  But, you know, it would be a fair trade-off if it stops the pain.

Then, if it works, I won’t have an excuse to be depressive anymore.

Except for my tragic family.