A Hole In One

So, the golfball-sized-glio is out.

I rolled a nat D20 on the surgeon somehow.  He got 94% of the beastie.

Apparently it came out faster than anticipated, in just a couple hours rather than twelve.

I remmber how much my head hurt in the OR when they woke me up and how hard it was to concntrate on reciting the months of the year...especially when I could physically feel him sucking out the tumor.  There was a sense of change of pressure, not unlike when the the dentist puts that sucking tube into your root canal, exceept it didn't get stuck in my cheek.

I also remembered the brain surgeon exclaiming, "This is a healthy brain!"

I did not have the presence of mind to say, "You clearly haven't been talking to any of my listeners."
I admit it felt as if my mind were a divot driven off the green by a nasty nine-iron.  It took over a week for me to start to get my bearings again, physically and emotionally.

"I did say that," Dr Romeo said a few hours later when he visietd me in the ICU.  "Mainly to the anesthesiologist.  But also the pulsations were..." and he added a vague positive to that, which drifted by me (there's been a lot of mental drift since my head was open on the table).  Dr. Romeo also remarked with a vague positive about getting 94% of the tumor out, which apparently is good math for...and he did use this word:  Survival.

That word is like a bright pinata hanging above every conversation I have with oncologists, too.  They take swings near it regularly after saying, "You're young."  I laugh, being now 59 years old and vividly aware of how that drives my value as a worker down.  But to oncologists I am just a kid.  This kind of thing happens when people are old, in their  70's and 80's.  They want me to fight for as many years as my young ass can get.  A "hopeful " and "positive" attitude can't come close to the energy you get when an oncologist and sincerely wants you to go out and get you some, you fine young thing. 

When I first found out I had this tumor I wrote myself off pretty immediately.  This is the deadliest brain cancer, so my first thoughts were mostly in the vein of, "I'm not here for much longer I guess, and will any of this be worth the fight?" 
Voicing this aloud to oncologists is the cancer equivalent of the millenial whoop. Oncologists are like soccer Moms to their patients, dispensing meds like orange slices and standing on each other's shoulders to bellow cheers at  you that feel like your Mom shouting from the sidelines, "COME ON, GIRL!  I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!"

Still, a cancer diagnosis is a confusing mix of issues all rolling over you like a giant ball of rubber bands, each stamped with strange, mystical, cryptic and alarming things like, "Is now a good time to start believing in God?" "How much WILL this all cost, anyway?" and "Say goodbye to your brain. The Alien Queen has set up her nursery."

Geeks will forgive my language at this juncture.  When that rubber band ball rolls over you it's easy to revert to a Hudson-like state of panic:  We're in some real pretty shit now, man!

And it would be easy to go the way of Hudson in Aliens if you were actually left alone with it.  But people come running onto the field like overrehearsed, methed-up marching bands.  The leaping, pom-pom heaving, shouting ranks of Oncologists are only one part of your personal color guard.  People who love you show up to remind you that this is not just about getting through chemo and radiation-it's about time you give them.  It's about love.  It's about taking care of you.  And they need, again, need you to do that.  It's about truly growing up, accepting the death sentence we all have, and loving into every day as a gift.

There's every reason to climb atop the pyramid and do a triple-back flip.

Even if you think you can't.

Because, be real.  You could do it.

Once.