A while back, I was speaking on an Asian cruise when I realized I could no longer figure out what the hands of the clock meant. And currency was getting tricky. In Vietnam, I handed a vendor two hundreds and a five for a $7 baseball cap.

Back home, my doctor had me draw a clock face at 10 to 3. Then he took away my driver's license. He sent me for an MRI. The nurse there wouldn't comment on the results, but when I asked to use the restroom, she said, "I can't let you go in there alone."

I pointed out that bathroom visitation was a particular expertise of mine.

"Like telling time?" she asked. "You need to talk to your neurosurgeon."

"I have a neurosurgeon?" Just what I always wanted.

I also had a brain tumor — the size of a basketball. Or maybe the neurosurgeon said "softball." I wasn't tracking too well at that point. Still, I quickly grasped he was planning on carving open my skull with a power saw.

Unfortunately, I've always believed intelligence was overrated. On a scale of everything-there-is-to-know, for example, the main difference between Einstein and Koko the Wonder Chimp was that Einstein couldn't pick up bananas with his feet. (As far as I know.) My father graduated from Harvard Law. One brother breezed through M.I.T. in three years. My own I.Q. had tested embarrassingly high. (Fortunately, it never showed.) And just then, all that was terrifying.

While Chain Saw Charlie, my neurosurgeon, was pointing out his Harvard diploma, my squished-up brain was digging through all the dumb things I'd seen theoretically brilliant people do. Not to mention, the even dumber things I'd done myself. The "Surgeons Do It Deeper" bumper sticker tacked to Charlie's bulletin board wasn't reassuring.

I came out of the surgery with Lady Gaga singing nonstop in my head and an unforgettably vivid story I'd dreamed while Charlie was hacking away at my brain. Most of the tumor was gone along with an indeterminate number of I.Q. points.

Twenty-seven days of radiation targeted the remaining cancer and my remaining hair. "Expect some cognitive decline," the radiologist said. No problem. Intelligence is overrated. And worthless if you're dead.

I was and I remain incredibly lucky. The cancer is in remission. I've never had any significant pain. By the time Lady Gaga finally shut up, I could tell time like a pro. And I'd witnessed enough real suffering to understand that what I went through was nothing.

I'm not as smart as I once was. But maybe I'm wiser. I'm certainly more empathetic. I'm slower, and I have to focus more. That makes me better about individual details, though don't ask me to remember a list. I know what's important to me, what I like, what I dislike. I've always thought genuine intelligence was the ability to integrate information, and I'm actually better at that. Though it may take a while to access some of it.

I don't know if any of that's made me a better person. Which is really the only measurement that matters. It's certainly made me a better, more considerate driver. And a far better writer. I've recently turned that story that came to me during surgery into the first novel I've written in years. Now I'm looking forward to as much additional aging as I can squeeze out of life. I'll take the brain damage as it comes. It's not like I'm aiming to be the smartest person in the cemetery.

To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Jon Tyson at Unsplash