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There have only been two episodes aired so far, but I’ve been enjoying 3 LBS. rather thoroughly. The new CBS series starts Stanley Tucci as a neurosurgeon with a God complex (though isn’t that somewhat redundant?) guiding patients with brain tumors through the convoluted process of surgery and recovery. The show co-stars Mark Feuerstein (In Her Shoes) as an idealistic young surgeon who butts heads (no pun intended) with Tucci over the best way to interact with patients and Indira Varma (Bride and Prejudice) as a neurologist who walks around barefoot to maximize her sense perceptions of the world.
Since I’m working on the memoir of my Brain Tumor Experience (from diagnosis to the one-year anniversary of my craniotomy), I’m finding the show rather meaningful. While television shows necessarily involve a certain degree of hyperbole for the sake of dramatic impact, there’s a lot this show is getting right. The patient perspectives are completely accurate, offering viewers a sense of how terrifying and confusing it is to be diagnosed, only to encounter nothing but ego and taciturn superciliousness from the medical professionals deemed best able to fix the problem at hand. I remember going into my neurosurgeon’s office (after sitting five hours in the waiting room) armed with two pages of questions and only getting about five of them answered, but nonetheless leaving with a craniotomy scheduled. More than a year later, I still don’t know if there’s a metal plate in my head, whether the indentation on the right side of my skull indicates abnormal healing of the “bone flap” drilled for surgery, if it’s safe to take birth control pills (some brain tumors are estrogen-sensitive), why I continue to experience focal seizures affecting the left side of my body, or whether the cognitive and physical deficits I have will be permanent. All of these matters, of course, can only be answered by my neurosurgeon, who’s much less interested in answering my questions than he is making sure people come out of surgery alive and more or less intact. The aftermath, I’ve been told, is a matter of mystery.
And so 3 LBS. offers a sense of that mystery (which is necessarily accompanied by frustration, because who wants to remain hanging about whether one’s left hand is permanently paralyzed?) while navigating the route through brain illness, injury, cancer, and other abnormalities. I think people I encountered assumed I’d been coddled through the process; since brain surgery is such a terrifying thing, most think I was well-instructed on what would happen and how I’d feel afterward. The truth is that I’ve been more prepared a dental cleaning than I was for brain surgery, and much of what I did learn was through reading medical journals, joining online support groups, and generally researching on my own. It’s a process that continues to this day, and it often angers me, the idea that none of the medical professionals who have the skill and knowledge to help have time (or the desire) to do so. Often I feel alone in the recovery process, or beat myself up for not being 100% better by now, and online support groups can only help so much, since it could well be the case that we’re all a bunch of malingerers who can’t get off our asses and force ourselves healthy again.
I suppose it goes against some of my deepest beliefs, the idea that a television show can offer a sense of support and kinship for someone like me, but I find it’s true. I hope 3 LBS. stays on the air, not because it’s necessarily a good show (though I think it is) but because it offers people like me a connection to something they can’t find anywhere else: a three-dimensional acknowledgement that this whole process is confusing and confounding with little relief in sight.
Since I’m working on the memoir of my Brain Tumor Experience (from diagnosis to the one-year anniversary of my craniotomy), I’m finding the show rather meaningful. While television shows necessarily involve a certain degree of hyperbole for the sake of dramatic impact, there’s a lot this show is getting right. The patient perspectives are completely accurate, offering viewers a sense of how terrifying and confusing it is to be diagnosed, only to encounter nothing but ego and taciturn superciliousness from the medical professionals deemed best able to fix the problem at hand. I remember going into my neurosurgeon’s office (after sitting five hours in the waiting room) armed with two pages of questions and only getting about five of them answered, but nonetheless leaving with a craniotomy scheduled. More than a year later, I still don’t know if there’s a metal plate in my head, whether the indentation on the right side of my skull indicates abnormal healing of the “bone flap” drilled for surgery, if it’s safe to take birth control pills (some brain tumors are estrogen-sensitive), why I continue to experience focal seizures affecting the left side of my body, or whether the cognitive and physical deficits I have will be permanent. All of these matters, of course, can only be answered by my neurosurgeon, who’s much less interested in answering my questions than he is making sure people come out of surgery alive and more or less intact. The aftermath, I’ve been told, is a matter of mystery.
And so 3 LBS. offers a sense of that mystery (which is necessarily accompanied by frustration, because who wants to remain hanging about whether one’s left hand is permanently paralyzed?) while navigating the route through brain illness, injury, cancer, and other abnormalities. I think people I encountered assumed I’d been coddled through the process; since brain surgery is such a terrifying thing, most think I was well-instructed on what would happen and how I’d feel afterward. The truth is that I’ve been more prepared a dental cleaning than I was for brain surgery, and much of what I did learn was through reading medical journals, joining online support groups, and generally researching on my own. It’s a process that continues to this day, and it often angers me, the idea that none of the medical professionals who have the skill and knowledge to help have time (or the desire) to do so. Often I feel alone in the recovery process, or beat myself up for not being 100% better by now, and online support groups can only help so much, since it could well be the case that we’re all a bunch of malingerers who can’t get off our asses and force ourselves healthy again.
I suppose it goes against some of my deepest beliefs, the idea that a television show can offer a sense of support and kinship for someone like me, but I find it’s true. I hope 3 LBS. stays on the air, not because it’s necessarily a good show (though I think it is) but because it offers people like me a connection to something they can’t find anywhere else: a three-dimensional acknowledgement that this whole process is confusing and confounding with little relief in sight.
