On the 2nd of July, while driving a car, I lost consciousness and drove into a tree at 100 kilometers an hour. The reason seems to have been I had my first real seizure. These are more widely known as epileptic fits, but in my case the reason is not epilepsy, but a pretty big brain tumor.

I’ve been to two hospitals and various doctors. The tumor appears to be what is called a low-grade glioma in my right temporal lobe. Determining the exact subtype (and with it the risk of metastasis) will require neurosurgery, which is scheduled for the 16th of August. I have excellent family and excellent friends; they’re giving me a lot of support.

Due to the wonders of crash safety technology, my passengers and I are most fine otherwise. I’ve had constant back pain since the accident, but it pales in comparison to the tumor thing.

I’ll have brain tumor surgery,
but that will leave some trace.
It’s grown around an artery
that needs to stay in place.

Since the tumor cannot be removed entirely, I’ll get some cancer medication afterwards. If that doesn’t work, maybe chemotherapy and radiation therapy. In a worst case scenario, I’ll be dead before the year is over. In a best case scenario, even highly successful treatment will involve pain and suffering and some degree of damage to my right temporal lobe, which happens to be the area of the brain most involved in language.

The brain is plastic and will adapt and I’ll still have my left temporal lobe, so I won’t become permanently deaf or mute. But I still figure I’d better finish the seventh Sermon before the neurosurgery. That will be hard, because it leaves me less than 4 weeks, during which I will also have to do various medical things, and the text is less than half done. But it should also give me an excellent distraction from my appalling situation.

And yesterday I got to read the fourth Sermon in German to my grandmother (so I published it now). It was wonderful, especially because when we talked about it afterwards, it turned out she had not heard, and was delighted to learn about, how violence has declined.

The prose version of my theory of consciousness that I previously mentioned got published at the place I had hoped for, as the very first guest post ever on Astral Codex Ten, or as I like to call it, the best blog in the world. Here it is: Consciousness As Recursive Reflections. This publication would have been the main event in just about any other month of my life. It is a huge honor and led to many excellent discussions. I’ll incorporate the feedback into at least one new and improved version, if after the seventh Sermon, I still have time for it.