In the latters 1970's while working for a Ph.D. at Caltech, I began gradually losing my visual field. Finally, 5 days before I was scheduled to take my final oral exam over my Ph. D. thesis, evidence was found that it was a large growing tumor from the pituitary gland that was destroying my optic nerve. (Well, apparently an old college buddy of mine was right after all when he suggested I needed brain surgery!) Knowing that I was about to go before 5 of Caltech's finest, I was reserving judgement as to which was worse: the final oral exam or the surgery!

I passed my final oral exam without difficulty, so the pituitary tumor became a significant "gift" to go with my degree---one that I will always remember! Afterwards I celebrated with friends over a few pitchers of beer. As the old saying goes, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die." I did not expect to die the next day, but I was not so sure after that. So drink away I did!

I then had 2 extended stays in the L.A. County hospital: the first for the confirmatory and pre-surgical diagnostics of the pituitary tumor, and the second for the surgery on the pituitary tumor itself. The surgery took the surgeons 8 hours to complete. They drilled through my skull on the right-hand side of my upper forehead, then used a medication to shrink the size of my brain to allow them to access the pituitary gland and the large tumor that was pressing on my optic nerve. (When a relative laughed at my description of this later, I assured him that my brain was still larger than his!) In that lengthy period they were not able to remove all of the tumor right next to the optic nerve without a risk of damaging it, so killing the remainder was one of the necessary tasks of the radiation treatment which followed the surgery.

Preparation for the radiation treatment involved creating a mask that fit over my face, so they could mark precise positioning for the radiation beam on the mask rather than on my face (otherwise I would wear an inked target on my head for the next 8-10 weeks). (Before being made aware of this, I suspected they might be trying to embalm my head!) Once radiation treatments started, every morning the nurse would try to line the mask, with me in it, up with the beam. Every time she moved the mask, it would no longer fit snugly over my face where it should, and so I would move so my face would be where it should be. That would get an immediate yell "Be still!" from the nurse. Of course if I stayed still, it would have done no good -- the mask would be lined up, but my face would not! I was the true target of the beam, not the mask, and if I was not in line, not only would be radiation miss the tumor, but it could hit my eyeballs and destroy the bulk of my vision that still remained!

After discussion with the nurse administering the radiation she soon appreciated the problem and we eventually worked out ways to achieve the task of aligning. However, her assistant seemingly never did appreciate the problem. She was just like a drill sergeant, barking out "Be still!" commands for several weeks of those treatments!

A few days after starting the radiation treatments I suddenly was unable to eat properly, despite being hungry. My sense of smell had already been messed up since an olfactory nerve was cut in the surgery, which had replaced my real sense of smell by strange ghost smells. Then, in the treatments the radiation was going through the part of the brain that controls smell and taste. Thus these ghost smells became much fouler and much stronger (becoming more like foul ghost tastes, several of which reminded me of foul-smelling rubber and tar), and left me in a state of recurring nausea. I could not stand to eat many foods because their tastes were either overpowered by or just a tiny bit similar to the foul ghost tastes.

These foul tastes continued for a while after I had completed the radiation (and taken the mask home for a ritual burning!). Finally, a few weeks later I started to get more pleasant ghost tastes coming back, and these engendered cravings. I would do things such as go to a restaurant and order about 5 bowls of soup! Since I had just moved to Tennessee from California after completing the radiation treatment. I am sure I helped engender the impression to some locals that pretty strange people came from California!

Since I taught classes at the University of Tennessee the next fall then left for Washington, DC less than a year later, I may have created a legend down there: a man from California with a Texas accent, a tough professor looking deceptively young that failed half of his class, and a weirdo that could really pack away that soup!