What brain surgery taught me about the fragile gift of consciousness

After the trauma of a high-risk medical procedure, Eric Markowitz discovered a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought — but in presence.

Eric Markowitz

By Eric Markowitz

There is a silence so profound it becomes its own kind of language.

The night before my brain surgery, my wife and I sat across from each other in wordless stillness. No dramatic goodbyes. No last confessions. Just the quiet hum of time stretching between us.

We sat in our living room, on the off-white tweed couch. I ran my fingers along the seam, slowly, as if trying to memorize its texture. In that quiet room, dimly lit and strangely alive, I felt the shape of time itself. It wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t a number on a screen or the sweep of a clock’s hand. It felt real — like a second skin, like air thickening into water. I wasn’t counting the hours anymore; I was living inside them.

I looked at my wife. Her eyes — soulful, brown, impossibly beautiful — met mine. I had looked into them thousands of times before, but in that moment, I wondered: Had I ever really seen them?

The doctors had just delivered the news of a lesion nestled deep in my cerebellum. If it was cancer — and if I survived surgery — I might have three months to live. There was a sliver of hope it was something else. But the odds weren’t kind.

And yet, hours before surgery, with death still in the room, I didn’t feel fear. I felt something quieter. Stranger. I felt connected. To her eyes. To my breath. To the weight of my feet against the floor. To the wind brushing the window. Even to our cat, oblivious, licking her paws in perfect peace.

The world had never looked so alive. Every detail sharpened, sacred. Time no longer moved. It hovered. Held. The future dissolved. The past let go. All that remained was one long, luminous moment. And in that moment, I was tethered — to her hand, to the stars, to everything. I was, finally, conscious.

Upstairs, in a crib painted white, our 18-month-old daughter lay sleeping. Her body rose and fell beneath a cotton sleep sack, rhythmically, gently — life announcing itself in the smallest of gestures. I thought about her growing up without me.

Not in a morbid way but in the way you might watch a boat disappear at sea: helplessly, lovingly, full of prayers you’re not sure where to send. I wept quietly and without shame. I imagined her face at 5, at 15, at 40 — her smile not knowing its origin, her kindness not realizing its inheritance.

I wondered how I could leave her with a memory she could never possess. I hoped she would know how deeply I loved her. And in that moment — that unbearable, radiant moment — I was, for perhaps the first time ever, conscious.

Not in the neurological sense. Not in the academic or philosophical sense. But in the raw, elemental sense of being awake to the miracle and the absurdity of existence. Alive to the texture of being. Aware of the great impossibility of life and my small, flickering role within it.

I wouldn’t wish the circumstances on anyone. But I would give anything to return to that moment of clarity. That intimate, holy sliver of knowing.

That night, I met myself. That night, I met the world. That night, I was conscious.

Removing Part of My Skull

There is a strange ritual to preparing for surgery. Like entering a kind of sacred theater.

They shaved my head. Inserted IVs. Draped me in a pale blue gown. A machine beeped. Forms were signed. I was asked to confirm, once again, that I understood the risks: hemorrhage, infection, paralysis, death. The odds of survival? Unclear. The margin for error? Unforgiving.

My mind floated between irony and awe. A lifelong Jew, I lay beneath a silver crucifix bolted to the wall and thought, I hope I picked the right team.

The surgeon — a man I had met just that morning — explained how he would remove part of my skull, gently push past healthy tissue, and reach the mass buried deep within my cerebellum.

He explained it calmly, like someone describing how to access the pilot light on a furnace.

It struck me, not for the first time, how casually we navigate the sacred in hospitals. How routinely we approach the threshold of life and death, armed only with consent forms and antiseptic.

The surgeon calmly explained how he would remove part of my skull and reach the mass buried deep within my cerebellum, like someone describing how to access the pilot light on a furnace.

People often liken surgery to battle. I am not a soldier, nor would I ever presume to understand the experience of war. But I do know what it feels like to ready yourself for something final. I do know the peculiar loneliness of putting your life in the hands of others, surrounded by those who care but cannot go with you.

This was my battlefield: a narrow bed with metal rails. The hum of fluorescent lights. A cross on the wall. My wife’s hand in mine, trembling slightly, though she wouldn’t let me see it. And yet again, I felt it — not fear but aliveness.

I considered the paradox of being most awake at the edge of unconsciousness. The strange intimacy of being stripped down to nothing: no ego, no schedule, no ambition. Just breath. Presence. And the knowledge that everything is about to change—or end.

At that moment, I was not thinking about business plans or unread emails. I was not anxious about the past. I was not hungry for the future. I was only there, suspended, waiting. And in that waiting, I was more myself than I’d ever been.

I laughed to myself in the hours before the anesthesia took hold: This is what it means to be fully human.

This is what it means to be conscious.

Survivor’s Euphoria

I lived. Not everyone gets to say that. Certainly not those who had the same diagnosis 100 years ago. I read the case studies. Cerebellar abscesses always ended in death. The post-mortem notes are stark, almost indifferent: “Male, 32. Sudden fever. Loss of balance. Died within 10 days.”

But mine was different. Against the odds, the pathology came back benign. A one-in-a-million cerebellar abscess. A freak infection. In my head for almost six weeks. It didn’t pop — no one knows why. An almost mythical rarity in modern medicine.

And yet, there it was.

The surgery had been successful. The mass had been drained. I would live.

But surviving wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of something brutal.

For months, I would require daily intravenous antibiotics administered through a line in my arm. The regimen was exacting, unrelenting. Every eight hours, a slow drip of medicine into my veins. My world became sterile gauze, saline flushes, biohazard bins. Sleep came in fragments. Fatigue nested in my bones. My body ached. My mind flickered in and out of clarity. But the alternative was simple: Do this, or die.

And still, I was grateful. Still, I felt it: the shimmering veil of presence, that strange and luminous state I had touched before surgery. I clung to it.

In the weeks following surgery, I experienced what doctors call “survivor’s euphoria.” A clinical term, woefully inadequate. It wasn’t just euphoria. It was revelation. It was a reawakening. It was a second birth.

The world opened itself to me like a wound and a gift. I smelled color. I tasted air. I watched dust motes floating in the light and felt tears rise. My daughter’s laugh shattered something inside me, and I let it. I held my wife in the dark, listening to her breath, feeling the hum of her life, and I cried because I could.

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And as I healed, a new obsession took root inside me. Not with fear. Not even with gratitude. But with survival itself. With what it means to live. To be awake. To be conscious.

I began to see life not as a series of accomplishments or checklists but as a system. Fragile, interwoven, alive. I saw how many layers had to hold for me to live: medical systems, technological systems, logistical systems, emotional systems. The privilege of time, the luck of geography, the dedication of nurses, the craft of the surgeon, the love of my family. A web. A network. An ecosystem of care.

Survival, I realized, is never just about one thing. It is about alignment. Timing. Systems working in harmony. And to truly outlast, we must honor those systems. Understand them. Tend to them.

We speak of longevity as though it is passive. But to endure — to really endure — is active. It is a choice. A practice. A philosophy. To survive is not only to keep breathing. It is to keep noticing. To keep loving. To keep choosing life, over and over, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

I no longer chase productivity the way I once did. I no longer confuse urgency with meaning. I try, imperfectly, to pay attention. To listen more than I speak. To feel what I feel, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

To care, we must be willing to be changed by what we see. This is the cost — and the gift — of consciousness.

Consciousness, I’ve come to believe, is not a function of neurons alone. It is also a function of care. Of love. Of the willingness to stand at the edge of death and choose, if given the chance, to return with open eyes. That, to me, is the miracle.

Not just that we think. But that we feel. That we can marvel. That we can sit in silence across from someone we love and feel time slow down and become something. That we can cry for the daughter we might never know and then — unbelievably — wake up the next morning and hold her in our arms.

I do not romanticize trauma. I would not trade my ordeal for insight. But I honor it for what it revealed. There is a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought but in presence. It asks nothing of us but awareness. It demands no degree, no ideology, no spiritual badge. Only that we pay attention. Only that we look — at our children, our lovers, our trees, our coffee, our clocks — and see them as if for the first time.

I have known what it is to die — or at least to brush against the veil. I have felt the cold clarity of the night before and the strange, staggering chaos of the morning after. And I have known the holy silence that comes not with answers but with awe. A silence so complete it rewires your sense of what it means to be here at all.

That silence still lives in me. In flashes. In fragments. In the rise and fall of my daughter’s breath as she sleeps. And now, in our second daughter, Isabel — born one year ago, luminous and new. She is, in some mysterious way, my continuation. My cell. My echo. My offering to the world. I watched her enter this life, watched her fill her lungs with the same air I once feared I’d never breathe again.

We tell our daughters that kindness is the most important thing in the world. But how can we be kind if we are not first awake? To be kind, we must first notice. To notice, we must care. And to care, we must be willing to be changed by what we see. This is the cost — and the gift — of consciousness.

And in those moments — holding her, listening to them breathe, feeling the fragility and fullness of it all — I am conscious again.

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