Added: 11/29/2007 |
Consider This Before Playing CraniumA neurosurgeon must never think that he or she is “playing cranium.” Such a surgeon must use great skill, while probing a patient’s brain. If working on a device that is connected to the patient’s brain, the surgeon must concentrate on the aseptic nature of the procedure. Should that device become infected, the infectious agent might travel up into the patient’s brain.
Now that hole in the cranium is not supposed to permit the escape of some sort of Parkinson’s-causing, evil agent. It allows for passage into the brain of a special probe. That probe stills the tremors that are associated with Parkinson’s disease.
A patient really has no reason to fear the procedures called for in that new type of Parkinson’s treatment. Doctors have been drilling into the cranium of specific patients for at least forty years. Before that procedure became part of a treatment, it was used in a rather infrequent test.
In the summer of 1969, doctors drilled a hole into the cranium of one young woman. Although she had just been the salutatorian of her graduating class, the doctors were not hoping for a better look at her brain cells. The doctors were conducting a special test.
The young woman was supposed to get a ventricular shunt. Such a shunt contains a long tube, a tube that drains excess fluid from the brain cavity. The neurosurgeon needed to examine the information that would come from the “hole-drilling test.” That information would tell the neurosurgeon where to place the young patient’s ventricular shunt.
After the test and the expected surgery had been completed, that young woman had a fairly swift recovery. Plagued for a while with a recurring headache, she finally resumed her planned schedule. She completed her preparations for her first year at college.
During her freshman year at an undergraduate institution, she learned much more than what had been presented in the classroom. She also learned more than just what she read in her textbooks. In addition to her academic learning, she gained much useful knowledge, and she developed new skills. She found unexpected ways to use her free time.
She learned how to knit. She also had a chance to make use of her very basic bridge skills. She did not, however, play the game “Cranium.” That game had not yet been invented.
Thirty five years after graduating from college, that woman has still not played “Cranium.” She is not sure that she wants to play such a game. In the past 35 years, she has had to undergo neurosurgery a total of eight different times.
During the summer of 1969, she received no hint that her future would include so very many operations. During that summer, she tried to joke about that pre-surgical test, the one that had required the drilling of a hole in her skull. After undergoing that same test, and while recovering from the follow-up surgery, the young woman had tried to add a touch of humor to her situation.
She had remembered the old phrase used for someone who was a rather slow-thinking person. Such a person was said to have a “hole in the head.” The young woman would jokingly tell others that she really did have a hole in her head.
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