Here are two of the three dumbest things I have heard in my life.

The first was in 2010, the day before I had brain surgery.  Jenn and I spoke on the phone with the anesthesiologist for my surgery.  She went through the entire procedure and her role in the surgery.  She told us that she would put me under, then some time in the middle of the surgery she would wake me up to be sure that they hadn’t noodled the wrong part of my brain (that I could still talk), and then put me back to sleep again.  Finally, she said one of the dumbest things anyone has ever said to me: “I want to be sure that you get a good night of sleep tonight.”  The next day I would be waking up early to get to the hospital, get put to sleep, have someone crack my skull open then scoop out a part of my brain, then wake me up, then put me back to sleep, put my skull back together and stitch me up.  There was no way I was sleeping the night before that.  Dumb, Dumb. Dumb.

Here is the second dumb thing that someone said to me.  In February I had an appointment at UPenn for a consultation on proton radiation.  The first person to enter our room was the resident of the doctor we saw.  She was very nice and very smart.  Her job was to play bad cop.  She explained proton radiation to us.  She filled us in on how it is administered.  After a bit she told us about the side effects of doing proton radiation on your brain.  There were some side effects that we knew about:  I will lose my hair and be fatigued.  I will get a sunburn on my head.  There is a chance I will lose short term memory, where I will have trouble recalling words in the future.  Then she went deep with the side effects.  I could lose hearing in one ear depending on the location of the tumor.  I could lose sight in one eye depending on location of the tumor.  I could develop secondary cancers in years to come (leukemia and melanoma were mentioned).  After spending 10-15 minutes on all of these side effects she asked me, “How are you doing?”  I am sure my face was pale.  I think I said “Well, that is a lot to wrap my head around.”  And then she asked, “Well, why is that?”  I thought, “Well, lady, did you just hear what you were saying?”  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.