Transformation

It was November 29th, 2024, 19 years since my first seizure. There was a knock at the door. When I opened it, several of our good friends and neighbors were there, confused that I had answered. I joyfully invited them in, especially since they’d brought gifts of home baked goods.

As we enjoyed each other’s company, one of our neighbors didn’t know the other. He casually asked me what his name was. That’s when I froze. I realized I couldn’t recall a single person’s name.

Two weeks later, I went back to work. Far too soon. That new space in my brain wasn’t just physical, it was psychological. I tried to fill it with distractions, almost as a way to avoid sitting with myself. In my family there’s a culture of pushing through the hard times.

“Okay Kieran, how many seizures have you had since the surgery?” a staff member asked during a post-surgical meeting with Stanford.
“None,” I replied.
She paused, genuinely surprised.

Even I was shocked at the outcome. I felt like… well, me. I felt no difference whatsoever. I found myself wondering if this was all some psychological trick, as if the surgery had been a placebo.

Over the next several months, the side effects became impossible to ignore. I couldn’t recall names of people, movies, even books.
“Oh, that happens to me all the time!” someone would say, trying to reassure me. They didn’t realize that every single day, I was forgetting the name of my own manager. At home, it was the same.

“The one… you know… the one with the little white dog,” I’d ask my wife.
“You mean our good friends, Alex and Darcie?”

Eventually, I adapted. I kept a list of names on my phone. Before meeting someone, I’d memorize their face, open my list, and find a line of context to remind me who they were:
“Tyler - colleague”
“Devin - Eli’s best friend”

The names weren’t the only loss. When speaking, I would often lose the word I was about to say, attempting to replace it with a nonsense substitution.

To this day, I’m still shocked no one noticed! My wife saw it all.