[Certain]

Split Eight: Your verse is difficult to critique because of the subject matter. The scattershot feeling of a lot of it comes across as at least half-intentional. I don't think it fits exactly, though. I thought the twist that the narrator had the disease was pretty obvious early on, but that doesn't ruin the verse or anything. I do think you could have pealed back a few layers of the backstory to make it more streamlined. It's difficult to accomplish as much as you set out to over the course of 26 rhyming lines, particularly given your dense wording, avoiding any straightforward description. With that said, I was able to piece together most of the story, and I applaud your effort to think big. There were a few difficult rhymes and a few spots where the wording definitely could have been cleaned up ("Eeyore" came out of nowhere), but this was a very interesting verse. Your topic itself was the most complicated of the round, so the complexity of your verse was justified.

Innovator: I appreciate how difficult this topic is, but I thought the easy route for any of us this week would be to simply describe life as a (insert topic). You more or less took that approach, with the psychiatrist angle being little more than a device to allow the opening up. Some back-and-forth with the shrink would have made for a much more compelling verse, if properly executed. There was good writing here, though. The three introductory lines may have been the strongest of the verse. Your rhymes are unusual, particularly in your deicsion to leave a lull with "stagnant" and again with "radius," two words with plenty of rhyming options that felt out of place. But mostly, the reason I have to give this battle to Split Eight is because your verse lacked the creativity and completeness of his. It felt like the middle section of a larger piece.

Vote: Split Eight