Altered personality, dry eye,
decreased hearing, vertigo, infection,
memory loss, a drooping face or death-
as if the nightmare of informed consent
that he unscrolled before us, dutiful
to law and actuarials, weren't enough,
there were the details of the surgery:
a window cut in bone above the ear,
the temporal lobe retracted from its seat,
carefully, and every minute counts,
the dura patched, the bony tegmen plugged,
voila, it's right as rain. And if we don't?
Meaningitis could set in. It's lethal.
I stared at Dr V's Mouse tie, you at his socks,
the Beatles pair. He hastened to include:
The complications are, of course, quite rare.
All this to caulk the simple, silly leak
you sprung against all odds between your brain
and middle ear. It's vanishingly rare,
stuff grand rounds are made of, case reports,
reputations, interns' wonderments. Change
of personality? I'd be a saint?
Exactly! A bruised lobus temporalis
made the princely Mishkin what he was;
was also what gave Fyodor himself
his famous hypergraphia, his wild
hyperreligiosity, his faints.
Sounds swell. Will you still like me a saint?
You are my otological great case,
my darling husband. I pronounce us both
well-informed consumers of health care goods
and services. Sign on the dotted line.
Forgive me. I prefer how we exchanged
our reckless, blind and uninformed I do's.