At USC I found the academic atmosphere somewhat restricted, rather anticlimactic after the intensity and the high level of science at Los Alamos. Everyone was full of good will, even if not terribly interested in "research." The "teaching load" to which I was reluctantly returning was not too heavy. All in all, things looked promising had it not been for a violent illness which struck me suddenly. I had returned to Los Angeles from a mathematics meeting in Chicago with a miserable cold. It was a stormy day; on the walk from the bus to the house in Balboa the violent winds almost choked me. That same night I developed a fantastic headache. Never in my life had I experienced a headache of any kind; this was a new feeling altogether — the most severe pain I had ever endured, all-pervading and connected with a sensation of numbness creeping up from the breast bone to the chin. I remembered suddenly Plato's description of Socrates after he was given the hemlock in prison; the jailor made him walk and told him that when the feeling of numbness starting in the legs reached his head he would die.
Françoise had difficulty in finding a doctor who would come to the island in the middle of the night. The one who finally came could not find anything visibly wrong and gave me a shot of morphine to alleviate the excruciating pain. The next morning I felt almost normal but with a lingering feeling of lassitude and an inability to express myself clearly, which came and went. Nevertheless, I returned to Los Angeles and gave my lectures at the university. The following night the violent headache reappeared. When I tried to telephone Françoise from my hotel room, I noticed that my speech was confused, that I was barely able to form words. I tried to talk around the expressions which would not come out and form equivalent ones, but it was mostly a meaningless mumble — a most frightening experience. Greatly alarmed by my incoherent phone call (I don't know how I managed to remember the phone number at home), Françoise called the von Bretons and asked them to send a doctor to see me. In fact, two doctors appeared. Perplexed by my symptoms that came and went, they took me to Cedars of Lebanon hospital. A severe attack of brain troubles began, which was to be one of the most shattering experiences of my life. By the way, many of the recollections of what preceded my operation are hazy. Thanks to what Françoise told me later I was able to put it together.
For several days I underwent various tests — encephalograms, spinal taps, and the like. The encephalogram was peculiar. The doctors suspected a tumor, which could be benign or malignant. Dr. Rainey, a neurosurgeon pupil of Cushing, was called in and an operation was planned for the following day. Of all this I knew nothing, of course. I remember only trying to distract the nurse's attention by telling her to look out of the window so I could read my chart. I saw there some alarming notation about C-3 which I suspected to mean the third convolution of the brain. Through all this I was overcome by an intense fear and began to think I was going to die. I considered my chances of surviving to be less than half. The aphasia was still present; much of the time when I tried to speak I uttered meaningless noises. I do not know why no one thought of ascertaining whether I could write instead of speak.
Françoise, alerted by the von Bretons, rushed all the way back from Balboa by taxi and arrived on the scene just as I was beginning to vomit bile, turning green and losing consciousness. She feared I was dying and made a frantic telephone call to the surgeon, who decided the operation should be performed immediately. This probably saved my life; the emergency operation relieved the severe pressure on my brain which was causing all the trouble. I remember that in my semi-conscious state my head was being shaved by a barber (he happened to be a Pole) who said a few words in Polish, to which I tried to reply. I remember also returning to consciousness briefly in a pre-operating room and wondering whether I was already in the morgue. I also remember hearing the noise of a drill. This was a true sensation as it turned out, for the doctors drilled a hole in my skull to take some last-minute X-rays. The surgeon performed a trepanation not knowing exactly where or what to look for. He did not find a tumor, but did find an acute state of inflammation of the brain. He told Françoise that my brain was bright pink instead of the usual gray. These were the early days of penicillin, which they applied liberally. A "window" was left on the brain to relieve the pressure which was causing the alarming symptoms.
I remained in a post-operative coma for several days. When I finally woke up, I felt not only better, but positively euphoric. The doctors pronounced me saved, even though they told Françoise to observe me for any signs of changes of personality or recurrence of the troubles which would have spelled brain damage or the presence of a hidden growth. I underwent more tests and examinations, and the illness was tentatively diagnosed as a kind of virus encephalitis. But the disquietude about the state of my mental faculties remained with me for a long time, even though I recovered speech completely.
One morning the surgeon asked me what 13 plus 8 were. The fact that he asked such a question embarrassed me so much that I just shook my head. Then he asked what the square root of twenty was, and I replied: about 4.4. He kept silent, then I asked, "Isn't it?" I remember Dr. Rainey laughing, visibly relieved, and saying, "I don't know." Another time I was feeling my heavily bandaged head, and the doctor chided me saying the bacteria could infect the incision. I showed him I was touching a different place. Then I remembered the notion of a mean free path of neutrons and asked him if he knew what the mean free path of bacteria was. Instead of answering, he told me an unprintable joke about a man sitting on a country toilet and how the bacteria leaped from the splashing water. The nurses seemed to like me and offered all kinds of massages and back rubs and special diets, which helped my morale more than my physical condition (which was surprisingly good).
Many friends came to visit me. Jack Calkin, who was on leave on Catalina Island, appeared several times at the hospital. So did colleagues from the University. I remember the mathematician Aristotle Dimitrios Michael. He talked so agitatedly that I fell out of bed listening to him. This scared him very much. But I managed to scramble back even though I was still slightly numb on one side. Nick Metropolis came all the way from Los Alamos. His visit cheered me greatly. I found out that the security people in Los Alamos had been worried that in my unconscious or semi-conscious states I might have revealed some atomic secrets. There was also some question as to whether this illness (which was never properly diagnosed) might have been caused by atomic radiation. But in my case this was highly improbable, for I had never been close to radioactive material, having worked only with pencil and paper. University officials visited me, too. They seemed concerned about my ability to resume my teaching duties after I got well. People were acutely concerned about my mental faculties, wondering whether they would return in full. I worried myself a good deal about that, too; would my ability to think return in its entirety or would this illness leave me mentally impaired? Obviously in my profession, complete restoration of memory was of paramount importance. I was quite frightened, but in my self-analysis I noticed that I could imagine even greater states of panic. Logical thought processes are very much disturbed by fright. Perhaps it is nature's way of blocking the process in times of danger to allow instinct to take over. But it seems to me that mere instincts, which reside in nerves and in muscle "programming," are no longer sufficient to cope with the complicated situations facing modern man; some sort of reasoning ability is still needed in the face of most dangerous situations.