Thinking With A Managed Brain Analysis

In each of the three essays, “The Pain Scale” by Eula Biss, “Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain” by Floyd Skloot and “Notes from a Difficult Case” by Ruthann Robson, each of the main characters in the stories deals with a severe medical condition and their experiences that coincide with their disease. Each of these essays all have certain characteristics that are similar, but are still very different in their own way.

In “The Pain Scale”, Biss discusses the idea of pain along with the concept of zero. She talks about her experiences of going to the doctor’s office and being asked her level of pain. She cannot put a value on it because of the many different pains she would feel. What perplexed her the most was the idea of being totally

Gray matter in the brain is what controls much of the human body’s mental cognition. Skloot’s effects are very similar to those of a patient who suffers from Alzheimer’s or dementia. Skloot would often mix words around when having a conversation and have very spatial memory which causes him to forget what he has read or been told. Again, an image that sticks out would be Skloot sitting in a doctor’s office while he is told about the severity of his disease. Skloot’s attitude towards the doctor’s diagnosis is not nearly as skeptical as in the other two stories. He does not question his doctor’s diagnosis or methods of diagnosis, but instead listens and takes heed to what he has to say. The disease Skloot has neurologists claim eventually fixes itself in so many words, but he believes that most of the “fixing” has mostly been completed since he is gaining dexterity and cognition in regular, mundane tasks such as tying his shoes, driving and remembering short directions. At the very end of the story, Skloot asks himself, “If there was a possibility that a surgery could fix my brain 100%, would I do it?” His answer is no because he believes that he has missed out on decades worth of information due to his disease and even if his brain were to function properly, he still would not be able to remember the years he missed so he would

The doctor’s diagnosis of Robson says that she has an inoperable tumor in her abdomen that will eventually spread to her liver and metastasize, and eventually killing her. The prognosis was that Robson was to undergo many rounds of chemotherapy to try to prevent the spreading of the disease. Robson later finds out about the baffling misdiagnosis of her doctors. She discovers the tumor was not inoperable, not going to be cured by chemotherapy, and not going to metastasize in her liver. Robson then devises a list of legally worded reasons as to why her diagnosis was incorrect. Robson had the legal power and knowledge to sue the doctors for malpractice and make the doctors pay for the damage they had already done to her such as causing her to lose her hair and to be in physical pain every day from the chemotherapy of which they should not have administered. However, Robson chose not to sue simply and figured the best payback was to show the “world famous doctors” that she was living and healthy without their treatment even though they still claimed they were correct in the first place. What made Robson upset the most was the personal care she received in the doctor’s office from not only the doctors, but secretary as well. The image of the traditional doctor’s office comes back into play, but only this time do the doctors not seem