Brain Tumor

March 16, 2006 2:32 PM

Name Tom's Tumor. Tom Lunt has a brain tumor. It’s a benign tumor and not life-threatening; the symptoms are "merely strange." Turn his misfortune to your personal gain by winning the contest and taking home the tumor.
posted by ba (21 comments total)

"merely strange" sounds like an understatement after reading his description of the symptoms. I'd have gone nuts by now wanting to know what the phrase is.
posted by SirOmega at 2:45 PM on March 16, 2006

"Actually, brain surgery feels very punk-rock to me. Kind of like the ultimate tatoo."

Some aren't too far off ... (surgical gore, maybe NSFW and weak stomachs) ...
posted by bcveen at 2:45 PM on March 16, 2006

The idea of the indefinable but always familiar phrase reminds me quite a bit of the feeling I get when shrugging off a dream - I know I just had some great idea/concept - maybe not an inspriation or some helpful notion - but some sort of general and completely lucid understanding of some random idea (however mundane) that becomes melted into nothing the more conscious I get.

Kind of like a mystical experience!
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 2:55 PM on March 16, 2006

Those symptons sounded weird, almost kind of like an OCD thing...Im surprised he found out it was a brain tumor and he wasnt wasting time with a shrink instead.
posted by Budge at 2:59 PM on March 16, 2006

This is a very cool post. What a weird symptom, it's like something out of a book or movie. I like his writing style too, very engaging.
posted by biscotti at 2:59 PM on March 16, 2006

It's like something out of Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat", which I uh, actually just started so can't many any specific comparisons.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 3:07 PM on March 16, 2006

The guy's gonna get a thousand suggestions for "Arnold."
posted by Cyrano at 5:06 PM on March 16, 2006

Once the air hits your brain, you ain't never the same.
posted by crunchland at 5:28 PM on March 16, 2006

I suggested Dimbleby
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:09 PM on March 16, 2006

SmileyChewtrain - I also instantly thought of Oliver Sacks.
posted by mkultra at 6:13 PM on March 16, 2006

crunchland, am I supposed to be singing that to the tune of That's Amoré?
posted by ba at 6:25 PM on March 16, 2006

mkultra - It seems I had a case of the Sacks-ian/Tom-ian syndrome... as I had proof-read my prior post over several times and did not see I wrote "make" as "many," until now. DAMN YOU, BRAIN!

Also, I'm a little further into the book, and man... it's creepy.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 6:43 PM on March 16, 2006

bcveen, that "trepanation" account you linked to kind of reminds me of Philip K. Dick's short story "The Electric Ant." It's about an android who discovers that his perception of reality is dictated by a "hole-punched sensory input tape" slowly unspooling (over the course of a lifetime) through a tape head inside his chest - this means, of course, that he decides to punch a few new holes and see what happens!
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 6:54 PM on March 16, 2006

How very odd. I would think I was going insane. It's a real testament to his character, intelligence, and sanity that he thought to pursue it as a medical condition and not a psychological condition.
posted by Ynoxas at 9:37 PM on March 16, 2006

You may if you like, ba. I quoted something my mom's doctor mentioned just before she went under the knife. It's also the title of a book on neurosurgery by by Frank T. Vertosick Jr. MD.

"Rule number one : You ain't never the same when the air hits your brain. Yes, the good Lord bricked that sucker in pretty good, and for a reason. We're not supposed to play with it. The brain is sorta like a '66 Cadillac. You had to drop the engine in that thing just to change all eight spark plugs. It was built for performance, not for easy servicing."
"The patients seem to do all right." I protested.
"Yes, they usually do, but every once in a while something funny happens : someone's personality changes, a patient up and dies without warning -- all little reminders that you are treading on sacred soil."
posted by crunchland at 10:55 PM on March 16, 2006

Fascinating reading. I had something like this quite some years ago, but I knew the phrase, and it popped up (as an idea, not like the writer's experience) without context, frequently. It went away on its own. I never worried about it much.
posted by Goofyy at 12:49 AM on March 17, 2006

Huh. Interesting.
posted by slimepuppy at 5:16 AM on March 17, 2006

I like this guy. I hope he's very OK after the operation.

And I'd name the tumor... Groke (Mörkö). With echoes of gork and grok.
posted by pracowity at 6:21 AM on March 17, 2006

Hmm...well, it's a useless mass of cells that serves no purpose, and constantly disrupts his life to tell him things he can't understand, so why not just call it Dubya?
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 6:57 AM on March 17, 2006

I named my brain tumor Sparky.
posted by Ruki at 9:30 AM on March 17, 2006

"Tomor" is the obvious choice.
posted by trigonometry at 1:28 PM on March 17, 2006