Drilling Down on Drilling Down

June 10, 2026

This is me.

I mean this will be me in…oh…42 days. Just 42 days until they drill not one but two holes in my head, run wires to the center of my brain and connect them to a battery the size of an old ABBA cassette tape they plan to plant in my chest.

“  Knowing me knowing you, it’s the best that I can do” 

Have to admit…this has got my attention. 

But, as my dad always said, “the more you know the less there is to fear.”

So, talk to me doc. One surgery on July 23? The second one on August 20? What do I need to know? What do you need me to do? Just say the word and I’ll do my part.

“COME IN GOOD HEALTH.”

Okaaaay…sounds simple enough. Hmmm…let’s hit the “Play” button on this nifty Kaiser “DBS Surgery Video” and find out more.

Uh huh… uh huh…I see…

Let me break it down. 

Apparently folks who undergo this, what the Brits might call “under-the-bonnet”  work, have been known to pack on pounds…I’m guessing while pounding down celebratory chocolate shakes during “recovery.” 

Experience teaches us it’s best not to be riding high on the ol’ bathroom scale before you experience the post-surgical “freshman 15.”

Makes sense.

I mean, if I’m going to do this, I don’t want to be a lardo after the re-do.

So…how best to approach this?

Claude?

We need a plan.

First, a new scale. But not just any scale. 

No siree Roberto.

Claude…my wingman, my new AI BFF, my very own virtual Jack LaLanne…Claude says I need the new Withings Body Comp 2000. Hop on this puppy each morning and a technicolor screen between my big toes tells me…and anyone else in the greater Petaluma area not blinded by the LEDS… things like my weight, the trend line on my weight, my vascular age, my heart rate, my nerve response score, my muscle, fat and water mass. All of this is then sent magically to my cell phone and Apple Watch.

Cool. 

Next up?

Sleep.

Claude says I need to better monitor my sleep and the best app for that is the AutoSleep 2000 also linked to my Apple Watch.

Hop off the ol’ Withings Weigh-O-Matic, grab a cup of tea, scroll through AutoSleep and I can tell you the hours I slept, the hours I didn’t, my sleep quality, my REM and deep sleep time, and my heart rate. Hell, I can tell you the times I got up to pee or jumped out of bed to work out a leg cramp.

“Okaaaay?” you might ask, “Where are you going with this, Rob?”

Why silly, where all great endeavors begin and culminate…

A spreadsheet.

This, my friends, is the “DBS Surgery Countdown Fitness and Diet Tracker.”  The most sophisticated spreadsheet I’ve yet to devise in a lifetime of long and fruitless self-improvement spreadsheets.

I walk…I record time and distance. I lift weights…I record reps.  I ride…

Boy howdy do I ride. I don’t go anywhere, but I ride.

How, you ask? How does a balance-challenged Parky log cycling miles? 

By never leaving the comfort of the garage, my friend.

I have two ride options:

Option A: I can perch on the roomy saddle of my trusty Peloton stationary bike and follow along with Christian Vande Velde as he puts me through simulated pro rides over the Roubaix cobblestones. 

Option B: thanks to my KIKR Core stationary bike trainer attached to my old reliable 2009 Specialized Roubaix road bike and my groovy 2025 ROUVY virtual reality cycling app which automatically adjusts the resistance on my pedals so as to simulate the climbs and descents depicted on my big screen, I can monitor my time, distance, speed, wattage, total joules and heart rate while “racing”  against other garage bound geriatric road warriors,  and watch on a big screen as the Alps pass by.  

Why just yesterday I drafted a group of friendly Italian boys along Lake Como.

I’ve even plugged into my spreadsheet the five stages of the Tour de Suisse and the first 20 days of the Tour de France so I can ride the same roads Tadej Pocagar and Jonas Vingegaard will. 

Well, not all the roads. The flat ones, mostly.

On the calorie intake side, I track the time and nature of my meals. I’ve even included color-coded cells showing “the weight loss remaining to reach my goal” and a cell showing just “how short of my 15-hour daily fasting goal” I fall each morning. The colors grow brighter the closer I get to the objective.

Cool, huh?

I’m guessing that’s not the word you were searching for. 

I bet your word starts with an “A”? 

I thought so.

I thought about including anal output, put that seemed  a metric too far. A bit too anal. Even for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no purist. I indulge myself plenty. 

At lunch I mainline Diet Pepsis and free base Jello Zero-Sugar Pudding cups like a heroin junkie on methadone. I know they’re poison packed with some nasty toxic chemicals from which I’ll sooner die than learn to pronounce, but if I can’t chase lunch without at least the illusion of sugar, my spreadsheet “Grumpy Meter” will red line and Cathy will be fitting me for a third hole in my noggin.

Okay, it all goes on my DBS Surgery Fitness and Diet Tracker spreadsheet. What’s next, Doc?

“MANY INDIVIDUALS FIND IT HELPFUL TO LEARN RELAXATION TECHNIQUES TO GREATLY REDUCE ANXIETY AND STRESS DURING SURGERY”

Uhhh…a couple of questions? Yeah…me…here in the back.

First, maybe it’s me…it probably is…not sure why…but anytime someone yells, ‘PRACTICE RELAXATION”, I have a hard time…mmmm…relaxing.

Second, what’s this “stress during surgery” stuff? I thought the plan was that, while sometimes awake, I’ll be pretty loupy throughout each surgery.

No? Not entirely? Hmmm…yeah…okay…good point.

Let me break it down. Seems each day will start at Oh-dark-thirty and I won’t be allowed to take my anti-shake-rattle-and-roll pills after bedtime the night before. 

Uhhh doc…two quick thoughts?

About this notion of bedtime?. Who are we kidding. The notion of a “bedtime” or any “bed time” the night before the surgery is a stretch. And I’m not talking horizontal.  I’m guessing no amount of “Magic Fingers Massage” in the bed of our Redwood City Best Western is going to get me to sleep. 

Second, as I understand it, I’ll arrive before dawn having skipped my morning meds. My head gets shaved and bolted into a frame. Me and my bald-bolted-in-place-head are wheeled into and out of an MRI machine. And then I sit there…increasingly more shaky, increasingly more stiff, and increasingly more aware that I’m about to have a hole the size of a nickel drilled into my skull. 

Between pre-op and post-op, I’ll be in my coach size recliner, meds withheld, skull drilled, and wires stuck into my brain for the same time it takes to fly from New York to London, but without a window, a movie, headphones, snack, or those little sox they give you.

Okaaaaay…

Maybe some deep breathing techniques might be a good idea?

Maybe some of those Lamaze things I learned when the kids were born. Shallow breaths. Focus on one spot. 

Or maybe that thing where you first focus on your toes, command them to relax, then move onto your knees, command them to stop shaking, and work your way up consciously relaxing every stop along the way.

That miiiiiiiight work…don’t you think?

What do they give you in spas? Lavender?  Burn some sage?

How about one of the posters dentists plaster to the ceiling showing some “happy place” like a puppy farm or a bubbling brook?

Headphones?

I didn’t think so.

Can I bring my own play list for the OR? Maybe some…what’s her name…Anya?…Enya? The woman who sounds like you’re drifting off with the elves along a stream somewhere in Middle Earth.

Before the orcs show up.

“THE SURGERY STAFF WILL MAKE YOU AS COMFORTABLE AS POSSIBLE”

Okay, now, that’s not helping. I know it’s supposed to. And I’m sure the staff will do their best. But…

“THE DRILL SOUND IS LOUD AND CAN RATTLE YOUR TEETH…THE RELAXATION TECHNIQUES YOU HAVE LEARNED CAN BE VERY HELPFUL.”

What?????

Drill sound?

Rattle my teeth?

CLAUDE!!!!

Mayday, mayday. Pilot to tower, pilot to tower…

Don’t give me that, “Don’t worry, Rob.” I don’t care if the surgeon does use a pneumatic high-speed handheld drill made by Medtronic called the Midas Rex?

Handheld?

You mean like a dentist?

No afront to my DDS buddies, but that’s not comforting, Claude. Drill too far down on a cavity and you get pulp. Drill too far down on my skull and you get the good stuff.

What?  

The Midas Rex is engineered for “smooth and precise” bone cutting? Especially when mounted with the new and improved 14mm “cranial perforator”?

First off, I don’t like the sound of a “perforator” and I haven’t even heard it yet. Second, the fact that the cranial perforator is guaranteed to, in all but 1 in 200 times, stop rotating before it reaches my gray matter is not the reassurance you think.

How does the doc know when to stop?

He doesn’t?

Well then, who does?

The drill does?

How does the drill know? Some kind of whizzy wig AI magic?

No? It’s mechanical? A clutch of sorts?

A clutch?

A CLUTCH?

What if the guy pops the clutch?

Okaaay, so after the perforator, we’re in? Right?

Not quite?

The surgeon still has to make an incision with a good old-fashioned scalpel through my dura.

What’s the dura?

Like thin leather? Its name comes from “dura mater” which means “tough mother.”

I’ll show you tough mother, Claude.

My surgeon will be holding this gizmo… this high end Dremel Tool… which will turn off on its own before it hits paydirt. Then he switches from the handheld perforator, which I’m guessing, giving the resistance my skull has put up, has been shaking a good bit,  to a scalpel to cut through some mother of-a- dura tough membrane  without going too deep, and then he threads a wire the width of an uncooked spaghetti noodle three inches deep into an area the size of a pea, and parks the tip of that noodle within a millimeter of just the right spot to zap me. And during all of this I’ll be wide awake and expected to answer questions, do finger puppets, and snap my fingers to help him find that spot?

Let’s get back to the teeth rattling part, Claude. Give it to me straight.

This is what Claude said…

“Rob, let’s be honest about what’s actually happening: you are awake, your head is bolted into a stereotactic frame, and someone is drilling through your skull from the outside. The vibration doesn’t travel through air to your ears — it travels through your bones directly to your cochlea. It’s not a sound so much as a full-cranial event. Patients have described it as feeling like the world’s worst dentist drill, except the dentist is working from the outside and the tooth in question is your entire head.

The “teeth rattling” description is literal. The skull is a resonating structure. When that Midas Rex perforator bites into bone, the vibration propagates through the mandible, the maxilla, the orbital ridges — your whole facial skeleton becomes a tuning fork. Some patients say their vision blurs momentarily from the vibration. It’s fairly common for awake DBS cases to be altered or aborted due to the patient’s extreme anxiety and inability to cooperate.

The good news is it only lasts two to three minutes.

Okaaaay, 

I’m going to let you in on a little lawyer trick, Claude. 

I had a lot of car accident cases in my day. I took a lot of depositions of drivers. Invariably, whether it was a pedestrian hit in a crosswalk, or a left turn into cross traffic, or a rear ender on the freeway, the question always came up: “How much time passed between when you first saw, let’s say the oncoming car or pedestrian, and you began to accelerate or brake?” 

I must have done a hundred auto accidents and taken over 500 depositions and the witness would always testify, 

“Oh, I don’t know…maybe a minute or two.”

People think a “minute or two” is short Claude.

“A minute or two” is not short. It really isn’t.

Think about it. 

Look at a second hand on a clock or your watch.

No, I mean…look at it…

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three…

When you want something to be over…

a minute or two is a loooooong time.