OMG Gage

What Up, Nerds?

So on Friday my family found out that my mother had brain cancer. It was in her frontal lobe. Yesterday she had successful surgery to remove it. Though she'll be in for chemo and radiation for a while yet. Relief.

When the doctors asked her what year it was before the surgery, she said 2013. She had other difficulties keeping time straight. Apparently that's one thing your front brain keeps track of. But they opened up her brain, removed the tumor, and she's fine with time now.

This is the famous story of Phineas Gage, who was one of the first recorded cases of having his brain opened. He was in fact worse with time afterwards.

It was 1848. Vermont. Phineas was the foreman of a crew that was preparing railroad grade. They filled boreholes with gunpowder and blew them up to explode the railroad bed into the right shape.

This was before they invented work-place safety. One day while Gage was compaction it down, the gunpowder exploded. The blast shot the the yard long and inch and a half wide steel tamping spike right through Gage's head. Through his frontal lobe. Bam. Gage collapsed immediately.

Ka Chunk.
(Pic from Wiki)

The spike landed eighty feet away, brains and blood all over it.

A few minutes later Gage just got up, probably swore a lot, walked over to a nearby cart, and rode on it back into town.

There wasn't even a doctor in town when he got there. So they sent for one, and in the meantime Gage sat himself down and started telling anybody who would listen about how he had just shot a big metal spike through his brain. He got a pretty big crowd to listen.

No really, right through the top.
(Pic from Wiki)

When the doctor came he saw Gage had some sort of injury, but he was sure the man was lying out his ass about what it was and how he had gotten it. After a minute of Gage and the doctor arguing, Gage started to throw up and half a cup of his brains fell out. Suddenly the doctor believed Gage.

An hour later a better doctor showed up. Gage told him "I hope this injury isn't too bad."  The doctor couldn't believe Gage was alive.

Gage declined quickly after that. He spent the next few weeks in near coma, with a coffin just outside of his house for when he died. Because he was clearly going to die. Because he still had a hole clean through his head. But then after a few weeks he got up and started walking around. He got out and walked to see his friends and family every day that he could escape from his doctor's care. And a month after that he was healed enough to live life normally. His main challenge after this point was escaping the care of his doctor.

He looked a little funny now, he had a scar and a depression in his head, couldn't use his left eye, and had a paralyzed left side of the face. But apart from that he was physically fine.

Walk it off.
(Pic from Wiki)

Gage lived a fairly normal life after that, until he died "of convulsions" a few years later. After the doctors heard he was dead, they got permission, dug him up, and took his head off to study.

But what about Gage's mental health? Well, that's where the problems were. After his accident, Gage became kind of a dick. Just a douchebag in general. Not a pleasant person. Besides that he lost many of his adult reasoning abilities. And what else? He couldn't keep an appointment or keep time straight. That's about it.

And then after a few years he got better, less of a dick. Parts of his brain took up the slack, and he returned to normal, more or less.

And that is how we know why my mother thought it was 2013. Or maybe she just wasn't paying attention when they asked her. Either way.