Tom Lubbock's Heartbreaking Memoir

Tom Lubbock, the day before his first operation in September 2008.

I found an article in The Observer recently that was fantastic and I thought I would share with you. It seems fitting for a time of year when you are thankful for what you have and the health of your loved ones. In "Tom Lubbock: a memoir of living with a brain tumor," famous art critic Tom Lubbock shares his diaries of his struggles with a brain tumor. It took away his language capabilities. The rare tumor took hold in an area of the brain that controls his language production. It is fascinating and heartbreaking to see the degradation of his writing and language skills (but maybe this is because I am a psychology nerd). This moving article can be found on the link above. I have included some excerpts below.

"This is about my dying: and how my life got here."

"At the same time, this life is unbelievable. At moments, it is terrible and outrageous. But in other ways, I accept what it brings, in its strangeness and newness."

"On the other hand, I don't know at what stage, and in what story, I am. I won't recover, no. But I haven't been given a definite time limit. So the narrative seems unclear and my luck, in a way, is both bad and good."

"Brain surgery: not worried about the operation itself; no, what an amazing thing; feeling excited, honoured, to be benefiting from, taking part in, human expertise at this high level."

This last section is the most recent - notice how the writing has changed.

"My language to describe things in the world is very small, limited.

My thoughts when I look at the world are vast, limitless and normal, same as they ever were.

My experience of the world is not made less by lack of language but is essentially unchanged.

This is curious.

"Would it be imaginable that people should never speak an audible language, but should still say things to themselves in the imagination?" Ludwig Wittgenstein"