there is more to this than what's happening

“How big will the incision be?” was the first of a list of questions I did not think to ask before brain surgery. I was honestly surprised they weren’t going to pull the tumor out of my ear with some sort of laser tweezers. I remembered just getting home on a sunny afternoon and answering my neurosurgeon’s PA’s call on my car’s bluetooth, parking in the driveway, and listening as she explained the surgery process. She told me they would make an incision, peel back the skin and the muscle… and then my consciousness started spinning. My roommate smiled and waved and I smiled and waved back. I could feel myself dissociating as she spoke. I snapped back to the conversation when she asked if I had any questions; “No, sounds good– see ya Tuesday!” Casual.

I woke up from surgery surprised to see about a 7 inch, L-shaped scar where my neurosurgeon, Dr. Hudson, cut a circular window out of my skull and reattached it with tiny metal plates. “The thing was like an inch around!” I thought. I wondered how many times the doctors had explained the surgery to me and felt very confused, but grateful for what seemed to be protective amnesia.

I met Dr. Hudson on a zoom call with my mom. He showed us the clearly misplaced bright white mass on my recent MRI and informed us there was, in fact, a demon marshmallow growing in my brain. I was stoked; I knew what was wrong with me. I identified as a very happy person and had a record low amount of stress in my life, but my panic attacks had increased from monthly to sometimes multiple times a day. I had a panic attack at work and quit my job. I called into another job crying and hyperventilating on the bathroom floor, unable to find a reason to be so upset. I got unreasonably angry at strangers and at my friends. I did yoga and breathing exercises and cold exposure and cross country skied with my friends: nothing helped. I started to spend as much time running in the mountains as I could because it's always helped me get my head on straight. Not only was my head not on straight, it was performing an exorcist-style spin. I felt absolutely possessed, and I was ready for my lobotomy.

The extra fun part was that the tumor was close to the speech-area of my brain, so he said I may have to be awake so that I can talk to them so they know they aren’t damaging my speech. I panicked so often over nothing, but with information like this, I felt calm. Luckily, a functional MRI showed they had a little space between the tumor and the area of my brain that lit up when I spoke, so I got to be knocked out for surgery.

After surgery, the hospital sent that demon marshmallow to a lab in Michigan to find the pathology. “The defined edges make me think it’s a grade 2, but I wouldn’t be knocked off my chair if it was a grade 3,” Dr. Hudson explained on our initial zoom call. It was a three-week wait before a PA called and asked if I had heard the results, yet. She told me the tumor showed to be a grade 3 malignant tumor called an Anaplastic Astrocytoma, and that radiology and medical oncology departments would call me soon.