This is a set of stories about recovering from brain injuries. It’s an accountability journal for me. I’m trying to figure out who I’ll be. And I’m also trying to share what it’s like from the inside. Brain injuries are more common than I realized and they are hard on everyone involved — from patient to family and friends. Writing these essays is helping me — here’s hoping they help someone else, too.
Seven months after I had a ‘small’ surgery to remove skin cancer from my abdomen, I ended up in the emergency room with brain tumors. There were clues that I was in trouble, but I didn’t recognize them at all. After all, if you’ve never had a seizure, it’s hard to recognize the trouble you’re in.
“There were clues, but I didn’t really recognize them”
Clue number one: I started to have a lot of trouble texting. I couldn’t seem to hit the correct letters.
Clue number two: Two days before hospitalization, I had trouble getting up from a chair in a restaurant. The circulating fan blades above made a distracting flickering pattern that I couldn’t ignore. So I asked my sister to drive.
Clue number three: Driving home the next day, my reaction speed was slow, especially on the left side. Scared my wife. She drove the rest of the way. One day before hospitalization.
Clue number four: I woke up and went to make coffee. Forgot how to breathe. I could make my ribs move but couldn’t unlock my throat. Ran out of air. Then everything unlocked and I took great heaving breaths to recover. Tried to get a glass of water, but couldn’t figure out how to get the water into the cup. Tried to wake my wife up but realized I couldn’t talk. Figured I’d had a stroke and finally managed to croak out, “I can’t talk.” Purposeful panic. She was following an ambulance to the emergency room 30 minutes later.
It wasn’t a stroke. These were seizures, but from brain cancer. I had another one in the emergency room. All those clues were from brain tumors pushing against the brain and wreaking havoc.
The brain scans were relentless. Two large tumors in separate areas of the brain affecting all sorts of important things, like perception, language, reasoning. And a minefield of smaller tumors scattered through the brain tissue just waiting for their chance to shine. The big one had to come out immediately. The surgeon was very positive about survival, but spoke plainly about death (unlikely) and recovery (slow) and long-term effects (possible). Brain surgery took out the two largest ones and I was back home to recover the next day. Except that I couldn’t figure out where the different parts of my body were, couldn’t talk very well, and couldn’t follow a thought or conversation. And my brain hurt. All the time.
Leave a Reply