Brain Tumor: Our Anniversary Approaches

A pretty well-established phenomenon is the one where the anniversary of a stressful or disturbing event approaches and the body freaks out a little. We talk about it in therapy a lot. I see it over and over again. I’ve seen it in myself. 

Well, here it is again. 

Not quite two years ago, I found out I had a brain tumor. It was terrifying. And then it took me over a year to feel more or less recovered. My sight was messed up for months. I was in pain for weeks.

I still have lingering pains, occasional unexplained fatigue, and my eye doesn’t work like it did. It can’t move all the way to the left, and it gets tired more quickly, meaning my brain gets tired by extension. I can tell I need to rest when I have the experience of “I can tell with my eyes that those are supposed to be leaves, but my brain can’t quite make sense of them.” It’s hard to explain. 

Anyway, my body remembers that.  

I didn’t find out until July, but this week was warm enough in May that my body essentially went, “Summer? Brain tumor?”

Because we’re early, it took me a bit longer to clock it. Ever since the high temps got into the mid-80s, I’ve been on edge, overstimulated, overwhelmed, tired, and more reactive than usual. And so, I’ve been wondering, what the hell is my issue? Then my kid bonked me in the head while she was flailing around at bedtime, and tears came. 

Ohhhhhhh. 

Oh. 

The image of finding out, on the phone with my PCP, as I paced around the kitchen. 

Telling my family in our living room as I watched my infant daughter babble. 

The last night I was able to nurse her to sleep before waking up at 4AM to get to the hospital for surgery prep. Knowing that I would never nurse her again, that this was it, that this phase of motherhood was over before I was ready, and I wouldn’t be able to pick her up again for eight weeks. 

Sitting in the little fabric cubicle with my husband, waiting to go back, really not wanting to do this, but knowing it needed to be done. 

Making a joke as they put me on the operating table, feeling like a science experiment. Hoping that nothing would happen to me. 

Waking up, wanting water, vomiting. 

My eye swollen shut, my head swollen all the way down to my collarbone. 

Looking out the window as the sun rose and one of my family members slept in the chair beside me. Stuck in a hospital bed for days. 

Being in pain, not being able to get away from it except when I was asleep.

Being exhausted and so, so bored. Watching or reading things made my head hurt.

Not wanting to eat, nothing tasting good. Being out of sync with any feeling of appetite except for when I began to decompensate. Oh, I’m nonverbal? I should eat.

Trying to walk around the block and realizing that this was not yet a good idea and I had better get home while I still could. Feeling weak, fragile. 

Wanting so badly to clearly make out my daughter’s one-year-old face. Not wanting to miss it. Not being able to see it right. Memories stacked on top of one another like chaotic puzzle pieces. Taking hundreds of photos so that perhaps I could look back on it one day. See it how it was supposed to look. 

Trying so, so hard to feel like myself. Managing it most of the time. 

But sometimes not. 

Sometimes not even close. 

And the whole time, knowing how lucky I was that this was benign. So what right did I have to complain? So, yes, even therapists do the shitty invalidating comparison thing to ourselves sometimes. 

The weather gets warmer, and my body remembers. 

I have been due for a follow-up MRI since March. I do not want one. I am supposed to get one. I have not had one. My family and probably my friends will have things to say about this. And I agree with them, at least from a logical place. 

Avoidance is present. 

I recognize it. I also know that I am not a bystander in all of this. I know that I have actions I can choose to take. It is not simply, “Well, I have avoidance, so I can’t.” I am still responsible.

My daughter noticed when the tears came. She placed her little hand on my cheek, her eyes round and clear. “I’m okay,” she said, which is her way of telling me what she would like to hear me say. 

I am okay, I say to her. I am okay, and this has nothing to do with you or anything you did. You’re good, we’re good. I’m just having some feelings come up about something else.

She looks at me. A question in her face.

Two years ago, I got sick, I explain. It was scary. I’m not sick anymore, but I still have some feelings about it. That’s okay, though. And I love you. I am so happy I get to be your mom.

She smiles. Presses her mouth against my eyelid. “I kiss you.” 

Thank you, I say to her.

She hugs me. “Wanna rub noses?” I do. 

We laugh as our noses swish against one another. 

The connection helps to bring me back.

As she falls asleep on my chest, I think about the MRI and about my avoidance of it. I try another form of motivation.

Do it for your daughter. Do it for her. Be uncomfortable and afraid if it means you’re here for her. Don’t be a self-centered butthole about this. You’re her mom. Do it for her. 

The next day, I make the call. I joke around with the scheduler about the unusual way my name is spelled. She says I was due for my follow-up at 9 months and my last one was a year ago next month. 

“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t want to do it.” 

“Fair enough,” she says. 

We schedule it. I hang up. 

My whole body shakes. I get annoyed. I get up and pace, shaking my arms, trying to get it off. I stop. I sit down on the floor. I let myself cry. 

I think I will be doing a lot of that until my next, “Stable, no change,” letter. The MRI is in June. I hope to get that letter by July. As tears fell, one thing I did notice was that my relationship to the emotion was more like acceptance. 

It makes sense that I’m crying, I thought. I don’t have to like it, but it makes sense. It’s not a problem, it’s just what I need to be doing right now. I can do this.

And then I wrote things down, because that’s what I do after stuff like that.

It is not the end of the world, and I am still here. 

That’s okay for now.