Lobotomy

  A neurosurgical procedure consisting of cutting the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex of the brain.       Name: Ward, Wilson </o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;">Diagnosis: Schizophrenia <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> </o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson was diagnosed with schizophrenia. It is a mental disorder that inflicts hallucinations, although the horror may feel unmistakably credible as it possesses your mentality and sinks its demonic teeth into the pulsing lobes of your brain.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson had been experiencing terrifying representations of our malicious world of which would torture his interpretation of what was real and what was horrifyingly fictional with the ability to transport itself into reality. He was repeatedly hospitalized during and after several schizophrenic events, eventually resulting in a duet of suicide attempts…the troubled teenager could not say fuck my life enough to compensate for his curse of a miserable state of living. But this story is not about Wilson’s schizophrenia—it’s about his latest treatment.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">A lobotomy is a form of psychosurgery and a method of neurosurgery with its procedure consisting of severing the prefrontal cortex of the brain. The anterior lobes would be separated with a result of a practically universal solution corresponding to one’s defective mentality; such mental illnesses included anxiety, depression, and numerous other neurotic behaviors with an absence of classification within the early twentieth century—especially schizophrenia.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">The inception of lobotomies originated in 1935 by two Portugal neurologists named Dr. Almeida Lima and Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz—their first techniques of performing lobotomies consisted of drilling holes into the sides of the patient’s brain followed by an insertion of a knife. This allowed the neurosurgeon to disconnect the lobes while the blade would scrape and swipe beneath the patient’s facial expression of agony.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">And then ten years later a new method emerged into the neurosurgical world—another intrigued neurosurgeon named Walter Freeman began performing lobotomies with an icepick from his own kitchen. The sharpened rod would be inserted into the patient through the eyelid and would slowly progress into the patient’s skull until the desired cortex was severed. It was faster, easier, more efficient…</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">…but no one can know that for sure; lobotomies have been discarded as a medical procedure since the introduction of chlorpromazine.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Until now.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> </o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson Ward encountered an Italian “neurosurgeon” who was willing to assist him in curing his schizophrenia. His name was Dr. Antonio Lombardi and he had performed a total of sixty-two lobotomies within his office—he would have performed many, many more lobotomies than a mere sixty-two, but the majority of the candidates were extremely skeptical of the procedure.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi’s “office” was an underground facility of unknown origin…it was dark and desolate with that feeling of trembling terror that our bodies are more than capable of producing. The walls were of cold and cracked concrete…the dampened tiles of the ceiling had begun to fall to the ground…and the floor had been stained with darkened blotches of blood that were still wet and smelled fresh with its sour scent of previous procedures.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson followed Lombardi as he explained his intentions:</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“Do you know what a lobotomy is?”</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“No,” Wilson replied as he was guided to the operating table; Lombardi situated his patient to lie horizontally and he could feel the slight tension of resistance due to the schizophrenic teenager’s uncertainty.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“Not to worry! I have performed many, many lobotomies! Many neurosurgeons have,” and he gave a brief history of Freeman’s results. Freeman had performed nearly five thousand lobotomies (a massive difference in comparison to Lombardi’s sixty-two), but what Lombardi neglected to mention was the fifty percent rate of success.</o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">In 1941, Rosemary Kennedy, sister of former President John F. Kennedy, was lobotomized to change her rebellious actions, but instead the procedure left her mentally retarded.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">In 1953, Anita McGhee was lobotomized after experiencing postpartum depression, but instead her mental existence became questionable as she was resorted to mental institutions.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">In 1960, Howard Dully was lobotomized in an attempt to alter his defiant personality, but instead he became institutionalized whilst battling drug addictions.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">In 2009, Wilson Ward was confined to the operating table as the wooden legs creaked and wobbled. He immediately felt the back of his shirt absorb a warm liquid…sweat? No—it was a goddamned splatter of blood from the previous patient. Lombardi began to strap and tighten the restraints upon his body. He applied his weight upon the belts as the strips of leather and polypropylene webbing intertwined within the buckles and guaranteed the security of Wilson’s safety.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson’s mind flashbacked to his previous schizophrenic events…but this was not a hallucination.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> <o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson appeared before the neurosurgeon with a blank expression of trust and monotony—but on the inside…deep down where it really matters…he was fucking scared. And this drastic feeling of fear only increased as the final restraint was applied: a thick leather band was tightened across Wilson’s forehead with enough force and constriction to nearly burst the veins beneath his flesh.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi wielded his implements of a hammer and an icepick…and there was still blood soaking upon the rusted surfaces of both utensils. The hammer was small but blunt; its wooden handle was splintered and its iron head was decaying from the oxidation. The icepick was long and thin and sharp; it appeared as though it had recently been used to ascend upon a mountain of frozen shit.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">And the blood…both the hammer and icepick were still glistening with a slobbering drench of salivating blood…and then a single declarative sentence deemed its existence to Wilson’s attention.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“Get me the fuck out of here!” but it was too late—the rusted point of the icepick had struck directly beneath Wilson’s left eyelid. The neurosurgeon gently jiggled and jimmied the implement deeper and deeper into his patient’s eye socket as the blood began to spit itself from the point of entry…the blood dribbled down the side of Wilson’s face as his flesh vibrated with the chill of vulgar fear and the pain of fucking hell.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“Please hold still,” Lombardi requested as he leveled his vision with the icepick. The constrained body attempted to squirm as the squirting blood continued to squirt in rhythmic streams emerging from the eye socket.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“Please…hold still ,” Lombardi repeated—the tone was more stern and forceful but his patience and composure was still applied. And meanwhile, the icepick was halfway within Wilson’s skull as the patches of rust tore the inside of the eyelid in addition to the delicate eyeball itself…the cornea, pupil, iris, lens…they were all soaked in blood as it pooled within the eye socket and overflowed upon Wilson’s screaming face.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“Please hold fucking still!”<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> <o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">The hammer struck the icepick hard and it immediately buried itself beneath Wilson’s eyelid another inch or two in response to the strike of the hammer. The echoing clang of the metal clattering upon each other was simultaneous with the corrosion of Wilson’s awareness…his vision had been bloody and distorted, and now the effects of severe confusion had intensified as parts of his brain matter ejected from his nostrils.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi was unaware and uncertain if he had successfully severed the prefrontal cortex…the patient’s brains were literally spilling from his nose, so Lombardi figured he had fucked something up.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi adjusted the icepick and scraped against the contacted brain—every swish of the wand and flick of the wrist resulted in additional brain matter emerging like bloody mucus from a diseased sneeze as it dribbled down upon Wilson’s upper lip and made an entrance into his mouth. Although it was not Wilson’s primary priority, he still took note of the sick and bitter taste of his own fucking brains.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">And as for Wilson’s other senses…he heard his own screams of terror secluded within the operating room…he saw only swirls of blood and flashes of light consume his degrading vision…he felt the searing pain of a rusted icepick being thrust beneath his eyelid and deep into his eye socket and scraping away his brains in a brutal and medieval attempt to cure his goddamned schizophrenia.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Wilson spat and sputtered the brains from his mouth between his piercing sessions of screaming and managed to utter an audible demand: “Get me the fuck out of here,” a surprising relinquishment of which was adjacently presented with his pain.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">“I’ve almost got it!” and then there was another strike of the hammer.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> <o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">An enormous ejaculation of Wilson’s brains shot from both of his nostrils. It was blue and bloody as the thick liquid oozed with a sickening slime of murkiness…and this was when Wilson’s untouched eyeball instantly glazed over with a cloudy gloss of hopelessness.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi removed the icepick and revealed an eye socket of which was converted into an overflowing pool of blood and brains and bits of rusted metal and pestled remnants of his eyeball…and amidst his right eye of blindness and his left eye of mutilation, Wilson managed to produce one last line of dialect: “Get me…the fuck…out of here…” and then he began to mentally tumble into an endless rabbit hole of a coma as the pupil of his right eye dilated to the size of goddamned quarter.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi began to cry…he unstrapped his patient and could only cry in a depressive state of mind as he pulled the unresponsive vegetable from the operating table. Wilson landed with a thud upon the floor and was dragged across the office as he smeared a flowing path of blood whilst approaching a mysterious door within the office of Dr. Lombardi. If it was the exit, Wilson didn’t give a shit—his life was fucking over.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">And as Wilson was continued to be forcibly mobilized by the bloody collar of his attire, Lombardi remained deep within a depressive state…he had failed the procedure and had been left with an innocent comatose on his conscience…he felt the guilt corrode his unstable emotions with each sob that coexisted with the long strides of which slowly progressed Lombardi and Wilson to the door.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> Wilson could not hear …he could not see …he could not feel …and he could not smell …<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">…but if he could smell, the pungent odor of death would have been rapidly approaching his nostrils as the vicious scents of the deceased would have become increasingly revolting.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF"> <o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">The door opened and Wilson was tossed into a room of which revealed the source of the goddamned smell of Lucifer’s own shit. The chamber had now collected a total of sixty-three bodies that processed the deaths with blood and maggots and putrefaction as the cadavers had begun to rot and liquefy from their bones.<o:p></o:p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: garamond, serif;"><font color="#FFFFFF">Lombardi wiped his tears and left smears of blood upon his facial expression of depression. But it was okay. He would just have to try again. <o:p></o:p>