By Donna Reames Rich
February 2005.
I am okay, I remind myself.
I'm lying on a stretcher, headed for an operating room in the same hospital where I work five shifts a week. I'm a registered nurse. I know a lot of the doctors by name. I could walk this campus blindfolded. But I've never been here as a patient.
It feels cold in this waiting area. I don't know if it's from the cold or from nerves. I close my eyes, thinking. I'm here for brain surgery. Someone I've met for fifteen minutes is going to slice open my skull and remove a tumor from the right frontal lobe of my brain.
At this moment, I am not thinking of dying. I am thinking of how weird it feels to know that someone, other than God, is going to see such an intimate, vital part of me. It's my brain, for crying out loud. This guy, this surgeon, is going to touch it with his hands. I can't get that out of my head. I shiver all over again.
A young guy in blue scrubs walks up, smiling, and hands me a purple Sharpie. He points to my head.
"Make an 'X' where your tumor is," he explains. I'm starting to feel a little groggy.
"You're kidding," I say, looking up at him and grinning. It's a normal magic marker. "For something like brain surgery, you'd think they'd be a little more high tech."
He chuckles. "Yep, that's what you'd think."
After I mark a clumsy "X" on the upper right side of my forehead, he rolls me to the operating area.
"You're gonna be just fine," he says.
I nod. I hope he's right.
Nine hours later, I open my eyes. I feel like a million tiny ants are crawling all over me. I itch everywhere. I scratch fiercely. A week from now, I'll be covered with tiny, open sores from what I discover is the morphine. I'll need it for the pain, but it will wreck my body. I'm in so much pain I can barely keep my eyes open. Everything hurts. It's like the world's greatest migraine. Light cuts like a knife. My mother's soft voice sounds like the shrill scream of a train.
But I am awake.
I am alive.
I repeat that thought over and over. It becomes my mantra when the pain gets too deep.
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.
***
February 2006.
I have passed the one-year mark. My tumor was not benign and the doctor said there was an eighty percent chance of it returning within three years. He congratulated me on surviving and recommended radiotherapy, and if it came back, chemo. He said I should make out a will, just in case.
He was an excellent surgeon, but he didn't know how devastating the whole ordeal would become for me. He was not a psychiatrist. He took out the tumor. He healed me physically. He didn't intend to hold my hand for the rest of my life. He didn't say a word about the Frontal Lobe Syndrome I would face, the mounting confusion and mental fogging that would force me out of work for two long years.
I am not who I was before the surgery. I was optimistic and carefree. I ran on the beach with my kids and my dogs.
I haven't properly recognized my own children for six months. I know they are mine, but I don't know which daughter goes with which name, or which one is oldest.
I can't remember the words for ordinary things. Making a salad, I ask someone to hand me "the green ball in the refrigerator." Crossing the street, I cling tightly to my daughter's hand.
"Do you go on green?" I ask in a panic, "or red?"
I've become a hypochondriac. Every symptom drives me to the doctor.
I tell my wonderful new husband, Dave, that I hope we live together for a long time, "but you never know." I try to enjoy life, but there's always a cloud hanging over me. I won't relax for two more years, at least. I look for the three-year mark in 2008.
"Everything will be great in 2008," has become my new mantra.
***
February 2007.
As I edge closer to my target, I have become easier to live with but now I am fat. Now, I eat chocolate, lots of it, and pasta, and bread. Food comforts me. When I was a little girl, every time I was sad, or scared, or hurting, my mother offered me food. We didn't have a medicine cabinet filled with pills. We had chicken soup, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and loads of sweets.
I am beginning to believe that I will live a normal life. Seven MRIs have been clean. No more tumors. I stopped the Dilantin this year. I had an entire year free from seizures. I can drive again. The doctor who treats me for Frontal Lobe Syndrome tells me "it can go either way." I can stay on disability or try working again. My neurological testing shows some delay, but it's improving. I am remembering more.
But I look in the mirror and don't recognize the woman looking back. Still, something good is happening. I am getting in touch with my faith. I talk to God openly. I ask Him why I had the tumor. I thank Him for letting me live.
***
June 2008.
My life has come full circle. My daughters, Zoe, Chloe, and Caroline, are beautiful and full of life. I will start work again, as a nurse at my younger girls' elementary school.
I've gone three whole months without thinking about tumors, or cancer, or chemo, or dying. I am healthy and whole. I am okay, I say to myself, over and over. I am okay.
It has become my mantra.
February 2005.
I am okay, I remind myself.
I'm lying on a stretcher, headed for an operating room in the same hospital where I work five shifts a week. I'm a registered nurse. I know a lot of the doctors by name. I could walk this campus blindfolded. But I've never been here as a patient.
It feels cold in this waiting area. I don't know if it's from the cold or from nerves. I close my eyes, thinking. I'm here for brain surgery. Someone I've met for fifteen minutes is going to slice open my skull and remove a tumor from the right frontal lobe of my brain.
At this moment, I am not thinking of dying. I am thinking of how weird it feels to know that someone, other than God, is going to see such an intimate, vital part of me. It's my brain, for crying out loud. This guy, this surgeon, is going to touch it with his hands. I can't get that out of my head. I shiver all over again.
A young guy in blue scrubs walks up, smiling, and hands me a purple Sharpie. He points to my head.
"Make an 'X' where your tumor is," he explains. I'm starting to feel a little groggy.
"You're kidding," I say, looking up at him and grinning. It's a normal magic marker. "For something like brain surgery, you'd think they'd be a little more high tech."
He chuckles. "Yep, that's what you'd think."
After I mark a clumsy "X" on the upper right side of my forehead, he rolls me to the operating area.
"You're gonna be just fine," he says.
I nod. I hope he's right.
Nine hours later, I open my eyes. I feel like a million tiny ants are crawling all over me. I itch everywhere. I scratch fiercely. A week from now, I'll be covered with tiny, open sores from what I discover is the morphine. I'll need it for the pain, but it will wreck my body. I'm in so much pain I can barely keep my eyes open. Everything hurts. It's like the world's greatest migraine. Light cuts like a knife. My mother's soft voice sounds like the shrill scream of a train.
But I am awake.
I am alive.
I repeat that thought over and over. It becomes my mantra when the pain gets too deep.
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.
***
February 2006.
I have passed the one-year mark. My tumor was not benign and the doctor said there was an eighty percent chance of it returning within three years. He congratulated me on surviving and recommended radiotherapy, and if it came back, chemo. He said I should make out a will, just in case.
He was an excellent surgeon, but he didn't know how devastating the whole ordeal would become for me. He was not a psychiatrist. He took out the tumor. He healed me physically. He didn't intend to hold my hand for the rest of my life. He didn't say a word about the Frontal Lobe Syndrome I would face, the mounting confusion and mental fogging that would force me out of work for two long years.
I am not who I was before the surgery. I was optimistic and carefree. I ran on the beach with my kids and my dogs.
I haven't properly recognized my own children for six months. I know they are mine, but I don't know which daughter goes with which name, or which one is oldest.
I can't remember the words for ordinary things. Making a salad, I ask someone to hand me "the green ball in the refrigerator." Crossing the street, I cling tightly to my daughter's hand.
"Do you go on green?" I ask in a panic, "or red?"
I've become a hypochondriac. Every symptom drives me to the doctor.
I tell my wonderful new husband, Dave, that I hope we live together for a long time, "but you never know." I try to enjoy life, but there's always a cloud hanging over me. I won't relax for two more years, at least. I look for the three-year mark in 2008.
"Everything will be great in 2008," has become my new mantra.
***
February 2007.
As I edge closer to my target, I have become easier to live with but now I am fat. Now, I eat chocolate, lots of it, and pasta, and bread. Food comforts me. When I was a little girl, every time I was sad, or scared, or hurting, my mother offered me food. We didn't have a medicine cabinet filled with pills. We had chicken soup, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and loads of sweets.
I am beginning to believe that I will live a normal life. Seven MRIs have been clean. No more tumors. I stopped the Dilantin this year. I had an entire year free from seizures. I can drive again. The doctor who treats me for Frontal Lobe Syndrome tells me "it can go either way." I can stay on disability or try working again. My neurological testing shows some delay, but it's improving. I am remembering more.
But I look in the mirror and don't recognize the woman looking back. Still, something good is happening. I am getting in touch with my faith. I talk to God openly. I ask Him why I had the tumor. I thank Him for letting me live.
***
June 2008.
My life has come full circle. My daughters, Zoe, Chloe, and Caroline, are beautiful and full of life. I will start work again, as a nurse at my younger girls' elementary school.
I've gone three whole months without thinking about tumors, or cancer, or chemo, or dying. I am healthy and whole. I am okay, I say to myself, over and over. I am okay.
It has become my mantra.
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