When I was about 17 the doctor came in to the little cubicle where I was sitting wearing one of those stupid hospital gowns with a grim look on his face. He said "I have some bad news for you, You have a brain tumor." My whole world spun around and my knees got weak. He continued..."I would suggest you get your affairs in order." My feeble reply was "I havn't had any affairs yet." During the next two years I got to experience medical science at its best, and its worst. I was admitted to a university research center as an outpatient. That is a politically correct way to say Human Gunea Pig. Don't get me wrong, I am quite grateful to be alive now, but, when you are a research patient you become a medical case not a human. Every morning Dr. Mengele and Nurse Ratchet would show up to tell me what new torture they had devised in the name of medical research. Two years of my life were consumed with testing, x-rays, drinking strange concoctions and infusions. Infusions are ultra slow IV's where your arm is strapped to a board, a needle inserted and you are hooked up to a machine that adminsters low doses of some unknown medication. I could literally feel most of the medications burning though my veins. After two years of research an awesome surgeon by the name of Theodore S. Roborts gave me some good news. He had developed a procedure to be able to remove most of the tumor. I was given more drugs to dehydrate my brain so they could move it around to be able to get to the tumor. The day they did the surgery I had resigned myself to the fact that I would not survive the operation. Three days later after 18 hours on the table I awoke, I guess. The doctor told me there was no cancer but I would have some side effects from the surgery.

      Interesting Side Effects.

      I guess having most of your memory erased could be called a side effect. I survived the surgery. I have outlived 95% of the friends I had made while I was an outpatient. I am no longer afraid of death and I came out of the ordeal a very spiritual person. Most of my childhood memories are gone along with most of what I learned in school. I have had to relearn almost everything and it is apparent to me that I will have short term memory issues forever. I forgot how to read music and how to play the piano. That was the toughest blow for me to absorb. Music motivates my mortal soul and to not be able to play was painful to me. I have suffered for a very long time because there is music in my head that needs to be heard and I had no way to be able to let it out. My fingers just will not cooperate to play the keyboard.

     Good News for Modern Man 

    I bought my first personal computer years ago. It was a VIC 20 by Commodore. When the Commodore 64 came out I had to have one because it had a SID (sound interface device) chip. The computer made noise and almost made music. The music sounded like a cell phone ringtone on LSD but it was music, sort of. After awhile I got bored because the sounds just weren't that great. Fine for games but not much more. In my next installment I will go into details how real music can be created with a Personal Computer but for now I will leave you with a link where you can listen to some of the music I have created with a computer with half my brain tied behind my back.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pageartist.cfm?bandID=209210

~namaste and AWEN /|\

Dana