My brain was drowning in grease.But that makes the whole thing sound weirdo and funny,like my brain was a giant French fry, so it seems more serious and poetic and accurate to say, “I was born with water on the brain.”Okay, so maybe that’s not a very serious way to say it, either. Maybe the whole thing
is
weird and funny.But jeez, did my mother and father and big sister and grandma and cousins and aunts and uncles think it was funny when the doctors cut open my little skull and sucked out all that extra water with some tiny vacuum?I was only six months old and I was supposed to croak during the surgery. And even if I somehow survived the mini-Hoover, I was supposed to suffer serious brain damage during the procedure and live the rest of my life as a vegetable. Well, I obviously survived the surgery. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t, but I have all sorts of physical problems that are directly the result of my brain damage.First of all, I ended up having forty-two teeth. The typical human has thirty-two, right? But I had forty-two.
My teeth got so crowded that I could barely close my mouth. I went to Indian Health Service to get some teeth pulled so I could eat normally, not like some slobbering vulture. But the Indian Health Service funded major dental work only once a year, so I had to have all ten extra teeth pulled
in one day.
And what’s more, our white dentist believed that Indians Only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain.
ndian Health Service also funded eyeglass purchases only once a year and offered one style: those ugly, thick, black plas-tic ones.My brain damage left me nearsighted in one eye andfarsighted in the other, so my ugly glasses were all lopsidedbecause my eyes were so lopsided.I get headaches because my eyes are, like, enemies, youknow, like they used to be married to each other but now hateeach other’s guts.And I started wearing glasses when I was three, so I ranaround the rez looking like a three-year-old Indian
grandpa.
And, oh, I was skinny. I’d turn sideways and
disappear.
But my hands and feet were huge. My feet were a size eleven in third grade! With my big feet and pencil body, walking down the road.And my skull was enormous.
my head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it. Some of the kids called me Orbit. And other kids just called me Globe. The bullies would pick me up, spin me in circles,put their finger down on my skull, and say, “I want to go there.”So obviously, I looked goofy on the outside, but it was the
inside
stuff that was the worst.First of all, I had seizures. At least two a week. So I was damaging my brain on a regular basis. But the thing is, I was having those seizures because I
already
had brain damage, so I was reopening wounds each time I seized.Yep, whenever I had a seizure, I was
damaging my damage.
I haven’t had a seizure in seven years, but the doctors tell me that I am “susceptible to seizure activity.”
