So, finally it was over and. After another short wait out front, the technician came out and gave me a large folder, containing the films of my scan. By the time, my brother and I had taken our places in the truck and fastened the seat belts, the curiosity was too great, and I pulled the films out of the folder to take a look. I don't claim to be a radiologist or a neurosurgeon, but some scans require no special skills to read. Some tumors are quite obvious, and mine was, a huge white glob on the right side, so big, in fact, that it was easy to see how it was pushing my brain toward the left, what the doctors call “midline shift.”
We both just stared at it in a small bit of disbelief. Okay, we knew it was there going in, but to actually see it, its size, and its effect was startling. So we sat, probably, with our mouths gaped open, and, finally, he started the truck, and we left for home.
At home, Sharon had a similar reaction to seeing the film. I tried all along to explain things to Taylor, but there's no easy way to explain these things to your tem-year-old-son who is so looking forward to his birthday in a few weeks because there's a new “Scooby-Doo” movie opening that day. Still, at supper, I tried to talk to him about it and explain that I would probably need surgery to remove it. Although I might should've talked about it around supper, he asked me about the surgery, and I truthfully explained how it was performed. You cn't really bullshit a ten-year-old. They know if you're trying to glaze over something. Taylor had a particularly adept skill at this. So, I explained how I would be asleep with lots of medicine and wouldn't feel anything and that a surgeon would remove a piece of bone in order to see the tumor and then remove it. He seemed a little amazed at the whole thing and said “There are people who do that for a job?” I guess the thought of sticking your hand in someone's head just seemed too icky for someone to choose as a job. I answered “yes, and it's a very good job, too. Icky, sure, but it pays well.” Then he asked me what happened with the piece of bone they remove. I told him that they put it back unless it was damaged.
Sometimes, a meningioma can invade the skull a bit and damage it. I told him that, in these cases, the doctors put something else in its place, how, in the past you would hear about someone with a steel plate in his head but that, nowadays, it was usually a piece of Plexiglas or lexan type material. He just looked at me and said “If they ever do that to me, they're putting my bone back in.” I told him that if the bone was messed up or diseased by the tumor, it was better that they didn't, but he was stern about it, and our discussion of brain surgery was over for the night, but I kept having that image he'd brought up come back to me; the image of it happening to him, and it made me terribly upset. I couldn't bear the thought of such a thing happening to my son. Of course, there's no need to worry about something that's only mentioned in the hypothetical.
When you have a brain tumor yourself, you don't need to manufacture things to upset you. I know this is true, but everyone needs to find their niche, right. That's mine.
Seeing the MRI, actually seeing the tumor did at least drive home to me the reality of the things I have to worry me and could, it seems, make me back off manufacturing things. It does seem reasonable for it to work that way, and that's precisely the reason it doesn't work that way with me. Reasonable. What's that? I'm surprised I can even spell it.
