So, life hands my new wife and me a choice between three options, each involving some chance of me dying sooner rather than later and in some more or less gruesome way:

• either develop ever worsening double vision and stroking out in the next decade;
• or give myself brain cancer to get rid of a benign tumor;
• or have someone cut a 6 square inch flap of my skull out with a small saw, poke his fingers and sharp metal instruments between my cerebrum and cerebellum, cut out 2 cm diameter chunk of flesh out, and hope that doesn’t turn my new wife into the star of a Lifetime channel movie—woman finally meets the man she wants to marry, marries, gives birth to their son, and then finds herself a single mother and widow, all within two years.

The odds on that last one were stacked heavily in our favor with 98% chance I’d avoid becoming a sad movie cliché.

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