The Lost Cameo

I don’t mean when a movie star makes an unexpected appearance in a scene.
I mean one of those old fashioned brooches, often with a person’s silhouette, carved out of a gemstone or a pinkish seashell.

I have been reviewing the CT scan of my head from September 2010. It is all very Halloween and of course I have no idea how to interpret it. Still, I flash through the slide show trying to see if there is any sign as to what is troubling the right side of my head and brain and skull so badly.

And then I think I see it! A cameo brooch! Why that is the problem, someone left their cameo in my head.

The author Diane Ackerman writes of her husband Paul’s world after he has a stroke:

Paul would tell me later that he felt different from before, newly embedded in himself, as if trapped in statuary. His room seemed to be full of Hopi dancers and dazzling as Mardi Gras. He felt his teeth blink. Something pagan was going on, with a mad ring to it, like a disturbed vibraphone. People were speaking a foreign language. And they didn’t seem aware of the pandemonium and cacophony he was enduring. Alice-In-Wonderland sensory warping is common after a stroke, as the damaged brain struggles to make sense of its surroundings.


I stare harder at the CT scan.

It’s like reading tea leaves.