Without meaning to be melodramatic, it's a six-hour-long surgery while you're fully conscious. I think the notion of the brain being drilled and sawed into is kind of a frightening one, especially when you have a steel frame attached to your head, and there are holes drilled into your skull to keep your head in place.
That being said, the surgery has been done at many institutions for over ten years now, and I don't think the surgeons who do the surgery would say that it's particularly high risk. I think it's more a question of the patient's willingness to swallow the image.
The follow-up to the surgery is almost as important as or more important than the surgery. The surgery really just gives you the key to the door. The setting of the equipment to give the right mixture of electrical impulses in the right direction in the body is very sensitive. It took me six to twelve months before I felt the surgery had actually benefited me directly because of the fineness of the adjustment of the machinery, the electrodes that go into your....