Matthew's parents live in a middleclass neighborhood in a
medium-size, mid-Atlantic city. His father, retired after a nearly fatal
heart attack several years ago, worked in a maritime-industry plant as an
engineer. His mother, robust and sad, is a full-time homemaker. Their
superclean brick row house is pleasantly furnished and crowded with
memorabilia of their children; but their memories are overwhelmed by the
details of Matthew's sickness, which began with a viral illness during a
vacation at the beach when he was 10. Matthew's mother: The first really
awful time was after his initial illness, after we thought he might
really get completely well. I'll never forget it. Matt came out of the
bedroom shrieking that his hands were growing, that he had to go to the
bathroom but the "poopie" was all over and was attached to him by
strings, and begging us to cut them. We thought that he was having a
nightmare. So his daddy went to lay down with him and soon he fell
asleep.
Then at 8 A.M. we heard Matthew [again]. We heard him running. He
was only a little boy. It was his first grand mal seizure and it left him
delusional, hallucinating, and robot-like walking into walls. He stopped
breathing [so] we headed for the hospital. That's when his
hospitalizations became multiple and the specialists diagnosed him as
having brain damage from a viral infection. That's what they think,
though they never really know. And the seizures began in earnest, one
after the other, sometimes hundreds a day and violent.
Matthew's father: We had to make sure he was restrained on the
number of occasions that he was hospitalized. He would bite his mother's
ear. And he would make these inhuman noises. If he ever got a hold of
you, he'd grab you like a vice.
Matthew's mother: It's a helplessness you feel every day of
Matthew's life. Among other things, it took more than a year for doctors
at [the medical center] to finally witness one of the animal rages we
were living with and fearing every day. You know. Like when you stop
having a toothache when you go to the dentist. He wouldn't have them when
we went to the hospital or for a check-up, and it got to the point where
no one believed us. We were accused of being hysterical, of exaggerating,
of not wanting to care for Matthew.
Matthew's father: One day we went to the seizure clinic for blood
tests of his drug levels and we were in the courtyard to smoke and he
began to attack me with animal noises, and he burst through the security
guards and raced through the seizure clinic. Two doctors grabbed him. He
growled and fought. He ripped their clothes. They really got an eyeful.
He was well over 18 by then. When this happened, the doctor said to bring
him into the intensive care unit to monitor him. Like always, it came
from nowhere, out of the blue. They strapped him down and he just tore
the cloth strips off. He made huge screams. He flipped his hospital bed
upside down and shrieked and shrieked. His mother went into the room to
try and calm him. She took her life in her hands.
Matthew's mother: Well, now he is in a hospital for the criminally
insane, but he is not a criminal really, and whether or not he is
psychotic is open to question. We know the things he does are bad. But
his brain is damaged, and no one can predict when he'll get his attacks.
Sometimes he gets depressed and obsessed with anything he hears, sees, or
talks about for long periods of time.
Matthew's father: I visit him every day they let me, every
day.
Matthew's mother: I feel guilty about not going to see him very
much. I'm worried about it. If we tell him to get his okay for us to
come, then he'll drive himself and us nuts asking about it. And then he
might get upset while you're there. The Epilepsy Foundation has a group
home. If he got better, they might be able to take him there. I know
that. In the institution, I worry about men taking advantage of him. And
I worry about what will happen to Matt when we go. His brothers will take
care of him. They're very close, but it hurts and it's tough. God it's
tough. What is especially heartbreaking is that his anger is not bad, not
wrong. Matt knows what he has lost.
* * * *
Less clear is what he might gain from surgery. But on November 20,
1990, two days before Thanksgiving, Matthew, his family, and his doctors
get the chance to find out.
Since the 1940s and '50s, neurosurgeons have removed areas of the
amygdala and the temporal lobe to stop violent behavior, with variable
success. In 1987, surgeons operated on both the right and left amygdala
in Matthew, whose temporal-lobe epilepsy apparently damaged circuits
involved in the hypothalamus. Located under the thalamus, the
hypothalamus receives input from most other parts of the brain and
regulates many body activities as well as the hormone-producing pituitary
gland, at the base of the brain. Along with the pituitary, the
hypothalamus is one of the major routes carrying signals of psychological
stress -- good and bad -- to the heart, lungs, bladder, and other internal
organs. The damage to Matthew's hypothalamus left him with an
unpredictable, assaultive, dangerous, hair-trigger temper. He also
suffers from obsessive thoughts and behavior.
Tags:
bad reputation,
belief,
brain surgery,
dilemma,
horizon,
human brain,
human subjects,
lobotomy,
mental illness,
nam,
neurology,
philosophers,
pretension,
psychiatric disorders,
psychosurgery,
record keeping,
safeguards,
scientists,
strict regulations,
successes,
surgery,
worth the risk,
wretched excess
