First Social Outing: One Week After Surgery

[Again, pardon my lack of chronological order. I've dispensed with the "Recovery Day #" system, which seemed perfectly logical when I started it -- less than a week after surgery -- because I realized that every time I use it, I have to use math to figure out the day and then explain that it starts from the first full day out of the hospital. So after this post, time will be marked from my surgery date, November 1st.]

This photo is from Recovery Day 4, not 5, but I include it here to illustrate two points:

1.     Look carefully at the top half of my face. It’s not very lively, is it? No, no it’s not.
2.     Voting is a both a right and a privilege! If I can get my butt down to the polling station less than a week after brain surgery to vote for St. Paul mayor and school board, you can damn well try to get yourself to the polls for the midterm elections in 2018 or do early voting. 

The next evening was my first social outing. By “social outing,” I mean going out in public with someone other than my husband. There’s an important distinction between one’s spouse and one’s friends or group of friends that will be discussed later.

My book group was meeting at a Vietnamese restaurant, the fantastic Ngon Bistro, to discuss The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. (No, I hadn’t read the book – I was a bit busy finishing my MFA midterm project and getting my skull drilled into and stuff.) A friend picked me up and we joined four other members of the book group.

About forty-five minutes into the gathering, which was a bit light on the book talk as everybody had been busy, I was feeling fatigued … but differently than usual. My brain and face were both tired. I blame mirror neurons for that.

Mirror neurons, largely observed in primates though other animals may have something similar, fire when an animal acts or observes an action. Monkey see, monkey do, basically. Humans are so keyed into the gestures and especially the facial expressions of other humans that often we mirror our companions’ expressions without even realizing it. Add on top of that phenomenon that we are also subtly trained from babyhood to respond to and with certain expressions in social interactions—cues that indicate encouragement, agreement, surprise, concern, sympathy, etc.—and there’s a lotta stuff happening in your brain-face region. After a craniotomy, you can feel all the effort that it takes.

By the 1.5 hour mark of the evening, I’m pretty sure I had given up trying to use my eyes and forehead and just responded to my friends with my mouth. Ever see photos of young kids who know they need to “smile for the camera” but they don’t quite have control of their faces yet so they give those broad, slightly disturbing, tooth- and gum-filled expressions? That’s how I felt I looked. There was no smizing happening on my face for more than a week after surgery.

You may be wondering why this evening with friends was the first time I noticed that it takes micro-muscular and brain energy to respond to people socially. After all, I’m married. My husband took off several days from work to take care of me. Our marriage is strong – we talk a lot. So why didn’t I notice that the top half of my face was struggling to show expression?

Answer: Because most of the time that I’m with my husband I am next to him, not facing him. We eat dinner and watch TV on the sofa, next to each other. When we’re puttering in the kitchen, we may be chopping vegetables next to each other or moving around in a coordinated culinary dance. Only when we go out to eat or when we play a game or on the rare occasions when we use the dining table to dine do we actually face each other for any extended period of time.

I think I’ll try to use my mirror neurons with my husband more frequently. In fact, once I’m back on the booze, I think I’ll take him to Ngon Bistro (barrel-aged craft cocktails!) and sit across from him. After all, he does have a very nice face.