Gotham Girl Interrupted Read online

  I had never dealt with postseizure cognitive impairments before, but while Sophie was at school and Olivia was at her dad’s, I opted to close all the blinds and settled on the Food Network for my convalescence. Ina Garten had the lovely, warm, soft-spoken voice I needed right then. Just the way she pronounced bruschetta felt like a comfy cashmere sweater. And there were no huge surprises in her world. Her husband, Jeffrey, was nearly always away, and someone safe yet pleasantly new would come over for lunch or an early dinner that involved mashed savory bread puddings and pork chops. I also found another comfort cook in Giada De Laurentiis, who tended to glow like her whole person had been routinely dipped in extra virgin olive oil, which seemed like a good idea postseizure. Giada also pronounced all her words as though she was chewing al dente pasta, which I thought might also help my still slightly slurred enunciation.

  Anyone who knows me at all will tell you that my worldview is based almost entirely on food. What’s a worldview, you ask? It’s what you do when you’re alone in a room and you think no one is looking. That’s a worldview. I believe with my whole being that the world doesn’t need a wall to keep people out as much as it needs a sandwich to a build bridge between them. If everyone in the world were made to try each other’s sandwiches—even if they just took small, polite “thank you” portions of each one, there might be a tiny bit of peace on earth. In the country of me, my sandwich is a BLT—on sourdough with the bacon almost cremated and crunched-up potato chips and Russian dressing on it. Every culture has its preferred specialty—whether it is a hero or a gyro—and there would be a lot more understanding and empathy among people if they only partook.

  The same goes for pie. Every culture has its own rendition of pie. A pie, like a sandwich, has a story. Invented by the Egyptians, pie has a whole narrative arc, a sequence that involves death, comfort, and healing. Did you know the piecrust used to be called the coffin because it was, in fact, shaped much like one? At this stage of my recovery, I wanted only to crawl inside the comfort of a crust and fruit and fat. I had been doing flashcards and singing sentences that’s sometimes recommended for stroke patients, but in the end, I decided (alongside Ina) that if I had a problem with my brain, speech, and my literal pie hole (aka my mouth), I was going to cure it with pie. There are two pies I led with—one because it’s easy, the other because it’s fabulous. There was something about having to read (which was also a tad tricky at the time) and follow each step in the instructions, having to use my hands, and walking to different locations in the kitchen that would trip me up but then also wake me up. The more I did with my hands, rolling out the dough, peeling fruit, the more my words came rushing back. Words like temperamental, lawnmower, parsimonious, and grappling hook. (Grappling hook?)

  This was how I would get my brain back. I’d cooked a ton when my husband left me and it had been a palliative. I decided I was not afraid to get baking wrong until I got things right. Oh, the sins I committed in the name of pie and words would put many a baker to shame—especially those darlings in the UK. I am of the mind, like numerous others before me, that when you grow up without much in the way of organized religion, you tend to make up religion everywhere you go. Given my worldview, I’m of the mind that pie saves. And now with the seizure, I’d planned to make a cult out of it. Its warm, buttery flakiness coupled with its filling in all the delicate sweet and savory forms is a living manifestation of comfort and generosity. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which I confess to never having finished due to my own lost time, goes on for forty-some pages about the nostalgic power of a cake-like cookie. Well, here’s where I go on for mercifully fewer pages about the restorative power of pie to rekindle words, executive function, memories, scents, and people.

  The easy pie I started with was a pear pie with Gruyère baked into the crust. I’d originally happened upon it while watching the short-lived but much-loved TV series Pushing Daisies. I’d fallen in love with the idea of this pie mostly because it seemed so unexpected, which was how I felt overall at the time. Plus, in the show, the hero brings his one true love back to life with an electric touch of his finger, which was also pretty much how I’d felt after the seizure. I had been zapped back to life but now was profoundly worried underneath all my shameless pretending and fibbing that things were fine. I needed an easy pie win.

  I ended up rechristening my pear pie the “Cheater’s Pie” because our dishwasher was broken at the time. Can I just tell you how sick I am of intelligent design? Our dishwasher is not smart; it is fucking confused and neurotic, all of which meant I had to cheat whenever I could with ready-made ingredients like peeled pears in jars and frozen crusts. Still, the extra chore of doing anything sequence-based with my hands, including the dishes, was what I felt I needed to do to get speaking properly again.

  The best thing about the pear pie is that while it keeps for about three days, it tends to be gone in two: once for dessert and once for breakfast the next morning. It’s a great breakfast pie because the Gruyere in the crust keeps it from being too sweet.

  But back to being a spaz…One of the most marvelous contributions of modern neuroscience is the concept of neuroplasticity. The idea that we can edit, revise, and interpret the stories our brains tell about our lives—even when we are bound or constrained by objective facts. I saw my job during these first days home from the hospital as one of working with my own head and nervous system to rewrite this recent story in a more interesting and productive way. If anything, after my first grand mal seizure, my neurological wires were crossed. The messages my brain was sending to my mouth and the rest of my body were confused, frequently lost, or going down the wrong neural pathway with the wrong set of instructions. But because of the notion of brain plasticity I could, by trying different things—making pies, singing opera, or learning a new skill like tap dancing—rebuild and even reconfigure the neural pathways in my brain to not only regain function but also forge new ways of thinking altogether. Out of chaos, I wondered if maybe I could make a new order and slightly different narrative for what had happened. I wasn’t sure what exactly; it definitely had to involve Ina.

  As I worked, I began to relearn where the different kitchen utensils were located. I regained my sense of sequence. There was A, B, C, D, but I began to be able to change things up with intent—rather than by accident. The pear pie gave me back old words like sink, preposterous, cantaloupe, sentient, and juxtapose.

  The second pie I practiced rewriting my neural pathways with was a crumb-top bourbon cherry pie. (It’s a tiny bit of bourbon, but I find it makes all the difference, though as a word of caution, most doctors recommend limiting alcohol when it comes to seizures. Except at this point in the story I didn’t know any of this.)

  While I’d be squishing the chilled butter into the oat and brown sugar mixture with my fingertips to make the crumb topping, I’d practice naming simple objects around the kitchen and singing songs I’d sung to the girls when they were little. “Many moons ago, in a far-off place lived a handsome prince with a gloomy face…for he did not have a bride…” The neighbors must have thought I was bonkers, but with the cherries coated in bourbon-sugar-orangey goodness and the juices bubbling up through the deep golden crumb top, it was magic.

  What I love about this pie is the immense feeling of potentiality that comes with it. The scent alone is a wildly generous neurochemical “Yes!” to life. The first forkful is a massive “Fuck, yeah!” in your mouth. No wonder Queen Elizabeth I loved it so much. It is a moment of total-beautiful-possible that helped bring back words like pusillanimous, vigorous, and Christmas.

  I made it a number of times before I got it right, but each time the story of the seizure and what had happened to me shifted a little in my mind. Sequencing came back: underwear, then pants. Gradually over the weeks there were beginnings, middles, and ends to different activities. Certain actions regained a familiar arc. I knew where the spoons were once more. I could say the word dishwasher.<
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  So what exactly does baking have to do with word retrieval and sequencing, you ask? Absolutely nothing. I could have done any new or unfamiliar activity like sewing or painting and it would have helped my cognitive function. Why? Because my brain was building new neural pathways. Again, this idea of neuroplasticity—that the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life means that our brains can compensate for disease or injury and adjust their activities in response to new situations and changes in environment.

  IN MY TEDX TALK about creativity, electricity, and the brain, I spoke about pie and about how our brain’s ultimate evolutionary function and most important job is to tell stories and send messages—no matter whether it’s to your big toe, to other humans, or to inanimate dessert ingredients. I’ve been trying to work this point in, but in a way that didn’t go full meta on your ass or sound too heady. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist the puns.) See, my words are working again already!

  7

  D-day

  THE NEUROLOGY WING of the hospital was on a high floor—some twenty stories up. I’d postponed the recommended follow-up appointment with the neurologist for three months. From everything I’d read online, seizures nearly always signaled something bad, something serial as our nanny Teodora used to say when she actually meant the word “serious.” A seizure could indicate any number of serial things: a tumor, a stroke, cancer, a brain injury, or something worse—something lengthy and degenerative.

  I tend to think the real medical examination starts in the waiting room—with the nurse evaluating your penmanship on the forms. There are always far too many of them to fill out. Then, it’s about magazine selection. No Neurology Todays in this waiting room. Everything on the coffee table seemed specifically curated to take one’s mind off of the brain.

  Apart from the man reading Marie Claire in the corner with his head wrapped up like a mummy, I could have easily been at the manicurist. And all these people with brain troubles were trying so hard not to look at each other. I picked up a copy of Knitting Monthly. I have always been a terrible knitter. Lots of dropped stitches, zero attention to detail. That’s so me, I chuckled nervously to myself.

  The seizure I’d had in my kitchen had been an aberration, I continued to tell myself as I perused scarf patterns for idiots. If someone could just loosen the bolt in my temple, I’d be fine. That said, what if my brainwaves indicated that I was absolutely bonkers? The worst thing would be for my ex-husband to finally acquire the hard evidence he needed to prove I was nuts.

  What if they made me pee in a cup and all that came out was chardonnay, cigarette smoke, and extract of bacon? (I’d gone on a date the night before and we’d had all those things at dinner.)

  As I covertly watched the other patients hobble in as their names were called, I realized it was yet another subtle waiting-room test of neuro-typicality and reminded myself to check my gait and balance when they called my name. No weird arm swinging. Stand up straight. Wings together. No sleepy pins-and-needles legs. Thank God I’d worn flats.

  The child in me wanted a prize for even showing up at all. By subjecting my brain to a series of lie-detector tests, I was “adulting” for a change. I usually saved all of my responsible juice for the kids, so this was a magnanimous act of self-care I’d decided to perform on the day before my forty-first birthday.

  “IS THIS GOING TO screw with my blowout?” I teased the pimply, moon-faced technician.

  I don’t know why, but I couldn’t take the moment seriously. Probably because it felt all too serious. We were two nerdy strangers crammed into this gray little closet of a room. It was the kind of forced intimacy that recalled the sweat-inducing middle school party game Seven Minutes of Heaven. I was having an elect-roenc-ephalo-gram (an EEG), which is a test that measures the electrical activity of your brain. Special sensors called electrodes are attached to your head. The electrodes are connected by loads of wires to a computer that captures your brain’s internal electrical weather system live, on-screen, and as a scrolling printout. The tech was sifting through my tangled mane attaching wires to my scalp with dabs of cold, gelatinous glop.

  I felt oddly giddy. I’d never had an EEG before (as far as I could remember), and I could only imagine that my mapped-out brainwaves would resemble a piece of Cy Twombly modern art: well-intentioned, faux-juvenile chaos.

  “Ummm…” The tech seemed to turn my blowout question over in his head, but also out loud, “Not sure. It’s a conductive paste that helps the electrodes adhere, so a little, maybe? It’s washable, though.”

  “Fine.” I sighed, rolling my eyes, blowout be damned. “I’m not a blowout kind of girl anyway. I always wake up looking like Eraserhead the day after the salon. Honestly, how did women in the 1950s survive without product and handheld hairdryers?” I babble when nervous, and I was a little nervous.

  Still, I was practicing being a quasi-fearless, responsible grown-up by actively participating. I’d even taken the bus, which alone would make any sensible person tense, all the pressure of possibly having a brain problem before, during, or after ultra-snail-paced public transportation.

  I had a big presentation back at the office in an hour and couldn’t be late. My boss already didn’t like me. I annoyed her with my general weepy incompetence and total lack of decorum. I should have taken a personal day, but that never worked with Clarissa. She had big abandonment issues. The good thing is that her hair was always terrible too, so maybe all this EEG glop would work in my favor today, I reasoned silently on the table. I could easily miss a whole year of work just doing my hair. It takes forever, it’s so unruly.

  “We also need to tape you up.” The tech held up a roll of thick white medical tape.

  “Sounds kinky.” I quipped. He feigned a laugh, taking pity on me for a moment. My guess was that he’d heard lots of bad, nervous jokes in his time and probably been instructed not to react too pointedly to anything.

  What was supposed to be a benign exercise in adulting was starting to feel like a surreal game of medical BDSM. The tech continued his careful ministrations to my head. I could feel him holding his breath now, brow crumpled as he attached each electrode one by one. He seemed so serious. Why did people have to always role-play so stridently?

  If I were a little kid having this done, I think I’d be terrified. I felt we needed a safety word but then realized that if anything I would be the one zapping his machine and not the other way around.

  “Okay, if you can hold still.” As the tech wrapped wide strips of bright white tape around my head, it was clear I was going to be late for my presentation—even if I cabbed it back to the office. This was more important, I told myself as he finished up, my ears pressed flat against my head. The tape was so tight but not as tight as the imaginary metal band I’d felt tightening around my head at the end of every day for the past few months. Work had been a shit storm of constant changes and stress. The script for our latest young-adult project had originally been written in French, and the translation read so clumsily, it was laughable. The more I delicately explained to the producer that no credible American teenager would say, “I’m going to make the social media with you,” the more she challenged my own grasp of native English. I laughed it off. The market testing would show how ridiculously off-kilter the dialogue sounded and we’d have to rewrite. It would cost more, but at least I’d raised the flag. After every one of these talks, I’d down a couple (or three) ibuprofen at my desk and tell myself it was just a tension headache, the kind that creeps from your shoulders up through the back of your neck and wraps itself over the top of your head like a malicious octopus. Everyone I worked with got them, didn’t they?

  “Now, if you can just lie back slowly and we’ll get a baseline,” the tech said as I caught a glimpse of myself in a video monitor. A hundred wires flowered forth from my head and I felt strangely glamorous for a moment in all my electro-brain-garb.


  “Oh my God, how Bride-of-Frankenstein am I? Quick, we have to take a picture!” I reached for my phone in my purse, suddenly excited to be part of the whole grand experiment, and shoved it toward the tech. “I look like a total badass cyborg! My kids will love this!” I smiled cheerily as he snapped a photo, aghast. “Ooh, I should be singing like Madeline Kahn or that other chick from the original film! Elsa-something!”

  I started to belt out “The hills are alive…” in a twittering vibrato. The bewildered tech took another photo and then quickly handed me back the phone. “Oh, come on.” I winked at him. “I bet you never usually have this much fun doing these.” He sighed impatiently and I lay back on the table. I knew I was a handful, but if I was going to be diagnosed with something serious I was at least going to be playing Maria.

  You may wonder how it was or why it was that I didn’t seem scared, but I was scared—that’s exactly why I was singing. I was filling the air of that tiny room, which didn’t seem big enough to house any truly bad news—never mind my bad singing.

  As we went through a series of exercises involving flashing lights and some curious takes on Lamaze breathing, hyperventilating, and holding my breath, my brainwave Cy Twombly unfurled from the scratching machine.

  The neurologist slipped into the cramped room. He was young, early thirties, and cocky with expertly mussed hair. It was clear he was a bright bulb, even if he was the opposite of a thoughtful, debonair Oliver Sacks-type I’d expected. I imagined him later in some hipster pickle bar, saying dumb, douchebaggy things like, “Hey bro, I know the three exact pressure points on your skull that will make you instantaneously crap your pants,” in an attempt to impress other doctor-types.