Sometimes, however, the connection between my life and the lives of characters on TV can get downright freaky. Such has been the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy as they've run tests, located the source of Izzie Stevens' hallucinations, and done surgery to remove the part of her brain in which the tumor resided.
As that storyline has progressed, I've decided two things - 1. I like Emory's setup better than Seattle Grace's, and 2. I am SO SO GLAD that my surgery happened before the season ended. Because, well, watching a TV show in which a character goes through the exact tests I went through, faces the same decisions I just made, has the same surgery I just had, and dies just afterwards, well, that gets a little weird. At least her dying was really due to the chemo and the cancer, not the surgery itself, but it's still weird.
It was kind of amusing, though, feeling like I could have been a medical consultant and calling shenanigans at various points. I'm sure a random observer would have thought I was crazy (or realized that I am crazy) as they overheard some of the following as I yelled at the TV:
"Oh, come on, the EEG cables are multi-colored so you look like a freakin' clown - they're not all silver. Why you gotta make it look all pretty just so they can be romantic?"
"Don't be whining to me - You got Denny to show up in like 10 minutes. It took me 3.5 days to have a seizure when I was in the seizure monitoring unit."
"Shepherd's doing a craniotomy. So what's he doing once he gets in there? That's just what they do to get into your head for the surgery. Surely he's doing more than just a craniotomy ..."
"So, you're going to remove her hippocampus? Y'all going with a selective amygdala hippocampectomy, or a mesial temporal lobectomy? Cause we decided to go with the amydala hippocampectomy, but I know the literature isn't unanimous about which is the best ..."
"Come on, chief. Y'all should put the picture of the brain with the contrast going into it on the big screen like they do at Emory during the WADA test. That's the cool part, not the brain wave mess."
"They clarified what you should be saying when they showed you the flashcards? I thought they were just looking to see whether I'd say the same thing both times. And that's stupid that they just told you to repeat back - they showed the cards to me again and asked if I'd seen them before."
"They let you shake your head during the WADA test? They told me the catheter was sitting in my carotid artery to shoot the chemical into my brain, so there was no way on earth I was gonna be shaking my head. Although, I only remember what happened when they put my non-language side to sleep. Who knows what I did when they put my left side to sleep."
"Huh, Izzie's right hippocampus controls her language and most of her memory? I guess she's either left-handed or abnormal, cause with most right handed people the right side controls visual-spatial memory, which is why they felt safe about taking mine out.."
"That's funny, Shepherd cuts higher than Dr. Gross for the craniotomy to get to the hippocampus. You would have thought he'd be more up on the latest techniques"
"The next day to wake up? Come on, Izzie. I was 'awake, alert, responding to commands', and grumbling obscenties about the Unversity(sic) of Georgia within a couple of hours of them closing me up."
But, the season has concluded, so I can stop considering myself a medical expert and wondering if I'm drawing pain-killer induced comparisons between my life and Izzie's. And, luckily, I was through surgery with my memory intact and recovering before Izzie got out of surgery, had memory problems, and then had her heart quit. Because sometimes it's entertaining to see how life and art are similar, but sometimes it's nice to say - "nope, we're going off-script."
So that's been the last two weeks of Friday afternoon Tivo-watching and recovery. Gaining my strength, taking my pain medicine, and being VERY glad to be on this side of the surgery.
