Change of Plan Day 1

Knowing the approximate date of your death changes your perspective, and being a writer, I have to send dispatches from every perspective I get.

Last Monday I went in to PeakMed, a direct-pay medical service (80 bucks a month and you don't pay to see a doc for a sinus infection, etc.).  I had noticed my speech was mushy and difficult.  I didn't know exactly why.  I was doing boot camp vocal  dills every morning, with all my opera vocal warmups and Jabberwocky 10 times as fast as possible (had to be hilarious if you were in the car next to me at the stoplight).  But still, I struggled all day.  I even had to hold up my left cheek to speak clearly.

Dr Chow at Peakmed gave me his long, deep, thoughtful look. 

He tested my neurological responses ("Touch your nose, then my finger...again over here and here...") then he said, "I'm concerned that you may have had a stroke."  He dialed up the side effects for my migrain medication on his phone and pointed to Stroke.  He ordered me an MRI and then Peakmed (well, Sarah), made all the prearrangement for me to get an MRI.  All I had to do was show up.

After 30 minutes in the same plastic coffin tube Deadpool languished in (Except wearing a football helmet and being subjected to a chorus of helpful jackhammers offering a sampling of  Industrial music effects:  NnngAAAA  NngAAA NNNGAAA-pause-GINGGINGGINGGING!-pause, etc.) "If your doctor does not call you within the hour, " the chirpy front desk attendant said, and then her voice got more serious, "Call him,"

An hour and a half later I called Dr Chow, who said something like, "I've been on the phone to the radiologist and the neurosurgeon and I don't like to give this kind of news on the phone,"

Ever seen the mushroom cloud films from Hiroshima?  It's like that.  But all contained in your gut.

I persuaded him that, since I write horror, it was most compassionate to just tell me on the phone.  "It's a a mass the size of a golf ball sitting behind your right neurocortex.  It's got an edema around it.  It looks like a glioblastoma,"  he sighed.  He was genuinely distressed.

OH.

Same kind Neil Peart had.  So, Rock Star cancer.  I thought.

Then the storm started.  God, what would this be like for my Amazing Loving, Wonderful boyfriend and best friend Jim?  For my Mom?  For my friends?  It's always been one of my fears to lose a friend, and I was about to do that to them.  It does something to you every time you lose someone.  I don't want to do that shit.  But here we go.

FUCK.