May 24, 2016 - Journal Entry

Thoughts

No one has ever disputed that my mother had a serious mental illness.

No one disputed her substance abuse, violence, outrageous behavior, her sadistic nature. It had always seemed to my siblings and I that once we turned 12 or 13, we had surpassed our mother emotionally. My sister and I used to say "mom's not crazy but she pretends she is and there is something crazy in that."

Was it her fault?

I had always just hated her. It was the most logical thing to do. It made sense to everyone to hate her. As terrible as that sounds--and I'm aware it sounds terrible--if you lived with my mother as your parent, you'd say the same thing. If she was your wife, you'd say the same thing. She was a burden and she was dangerous. Simple facts.

But why was she that way?

I'm starting to think it had something to do with the brain surgery she underwent in 1970.

Research Notes So Far

I'm going to call the hospital. I did some research and first I looked up the kind of lobotomy I think it was. Right now the only evidence I have is that she did definitely have brain surgery and they definitely did drill two holes in her skull. My brother said he remembered three because she always told him she felt like a bowling ball. I'd never heard that but she always told us all different versions of the same story. And, I wish she hadn't put it that way because she was crude and uninhibited. Why did she have to make a joke of it?

So it seems possible she had something called a bilateral cingulectomy.
From Wikipedia:

"In most cases the procedure started with the medical team taking a number of scan images of the brain of the patient. This step ensured that the exact target, the was mapped out, so that the surgeon could identify it. Then burr holes are created in the patient's using a drill. at the targeted tissue were made with the help of fine inserted at the right angle into the subject's brain based on plotting charts and making sure important and were intact. The electrode was placed in a , or a holder, with only its tip projecting. Upon the correct insertion of the holder into the brain tissue, air was injected and more scan images were taken. Then, after the medical team had made sure they were on the right track, the tip of the electrode was advanced to the plane of the where it was heated to 75-90 °C. Once the first lesion was created it served as a center around which several other were created. In order to confirm whether lesions are made at the right place, images were taken postoperatively and analyzed."
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