Brain Tumor

Brain Tumor is my experience with a foreign object that came into my cranium about twenty years before making itself known through a series of blackout seizures.

Interestingly, I continued to function while in those seizure states. Sometimes, I was completely placid, so relaxed that, in one instance, I might have drowned in a hot tub if not for the presence of a companion. At other times, according to colleagues, I was uncharacteristically harsh and argumentative. Always, I disbelieved their reports afterward.

That is … until the last seizure, when I woke up one Saturday morning and realized I had no idea of what I had done the previous evening—only that something very, very strange had occurred.

An MRI the following Monday showed the presence of a meningioma, larger than a golf ball, in my left frontal lobe, an area that affects logic and reasoning. Fortunately, it was benign, but it had to be removed. As my neurosurgeon said, “It’s taking up space in a limited space. It can’t push your forehead out, so it’s pushing your brain in. That’s why you’ve had blackout seizures.”

But the tumor itself was a mere McGuffin, the part of the story that, without it, there is no story. The real story delves into the challenges and hardships, the joys and blessings, the benefits and lessons that develop from a medical emergency.

Each of the forty-four short chapters concludes with a lesson that pertains to that part of the story.

• I am not alone.
• Good is coming from this.
• Never force anything or anyone, especially yourself.
• To give is to receive.
• And others.

While Brain Tumor is a good read about one major event in my human experience, the lessons are universal. Pick it up. Read it. I think you will find a message for you.

This book spans six months, beginning with my first noticeable seizure on Memorial Day weekend.
The story covers apparently normal status quo, dark depression and a life-saving belief in being positive.
The incidents are true. The names have not been changed. The perspective is mine, the patient’s, which is different from my family’s, my friends’ and my doctors’.
As such, it conveys a message that only a patient can offer. The message asks “Why is this happening?” and “What’s important?”

—Excerpt