Doctor GrubHub

Large: I've been having these really intense headaches. They only last for a split second and then they're gone. It's like a lightning flash; almost like a surge of electricity and then it's gone. Doctor: You're Gideon's kid. I didn't even put the two together. Large: Yeah. Doctor: I'm sorry about your mother. Large: Yeah. Thank you. Doctor: I must have missed you at Shiva last night. Large: Yeah. Doctor: So how long have these headaches been going on? Large: Well I think I've had them in some form since I was a little kid. But they've been getting more and more frequent over the last year. Doctor: (looking at chart) How long have you been on Lithium? Large: Oh uh, I've been on some form of it since I was ten or so. Doctor: And what about Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Depakote; did any of that ever help you? Large: No. I mean I don't know. It's recently occurred to me that I might not even have a problem. Only I'd...

As a child wandering the globe, I brought along a healthy dose of Soviet skepticism. Upon exiting Russia and arriving in the UK at London's Heathrow Airport, I looked around at the Brits and asked "What are all these foreigners doing here?" My parents laughed, finding it 'cute.' In order to acclimate, I read various books handed to me by my parents, and first among these was a general encyclopedia, written in English, of course. Daily I scanned numerous entries with an insatiable drive to understand, while at school the only words I dared utter to my young British peers were "let's go play" (It was the first grade, with plenty of recess built into the curriculum). Unbeknownst to me or my peers, an intricate set of neural processes allowing accelerated learning and memory formation were underway in my ripening 7 year-old brain, and they were made possible by an ancient, highly-evolved need to survive. During sleep, I was terrorized by the recur...