We've Come a Long Way, Baby

Tonight was my first night out since the surgery and also my first opera! My dad has a habit of getting tickets for some kind of show and not telling anyone until a couple days before, yet every time being surprised and irritated when one of us says they already have plans. A week ago he told me that he'd gotten tickets to La Traviata, one of the most famous operas by Verdi about a courtesan (wayward woman) who falls in love with a man and their move to the country, tragic separation, and even more tragic reunion. Love, betrayal, a duel - all standard fodder for a romance novel or an opera. Clearly opera is more cultured, classy and includes music, but really the same underlying themes. It was wonderful. I got goosebumps half way through the second act, and when they saw each other in the third act, I almost cried. Our young formerly-wayward, now repented Violetta has tuberculosis, which, in the third act, leaves her weak, pale and lying on the floor by the time she hears that her Alfredo has come to her. A few songs and three additional character re-appearances later, she dies. At another time, I would wax on about the beauty of it, the sights, the sounds, the strong emotion that dripped off of each note as the music permeated the room, but it's 11:45pm and I'm exhausted.

So, the point is that we've come a staggeringly long way from 1853. Throughout the show, as Violetta's tuberculosis grows worse and there's nothing anyone can do to cure it, I kept thinking about how easily it could have been fixed today. "Consumption", as they called it then, is on the whole little more than a vaccine you get as a kid when you start school and never think of again. If you cough up blood, it's a sign to go to the doctor and get a swab test and a ten-day pill regimen, not a death sentence.

In 1853, I certainly wouldn't be here. I would have untreated epilepsy, which from what I learned when I was briefly off of medication as a kid, would most likely be generalized tonic-clonic seizures, not the simple partial that I've grown so accommodating of. I probably wouldn't be able to function as a full member of society, and there's certainly no way my parents would've been able to marry me off unless they were exceedingly rich and able to make it worth my future caretaker's time. Who knows, I might not have even made it to twenty five. But here I am. Five weeks after having half of my head taken off and the origin of my seizures residing in a petri dish somewhere, I'm sitting in bed under a yellow and white striped duvet from Ikea and about to stream season two of Lie to Me off of Netflix. Look what a hundred and fifty eight years has done to us. Medicine grows and evolves so quickly, and so constantly. I often take heart from that. In case this surgery doesn't work, something that will work is on its way, coming soon to a neuro office near me.