Boxing Week Blowout

Alright, who left their ping pong ball in my brain?

Yup, that's actually my brain. And yup, that's definitely an abnormal growth.

See, I had a seizure on Boxing Day(shortly after that last post) at a mall after eating a large Chinese buffet-style meal with my Oma and Opa in Windsor. I seized mid-sentence and woke up on a gurney in an ambulance. The seizure sucked, I didn't really flail around all that much, but I definitely fell backwards like a sac of bricks and smoked my head on the ground. I bit the fuck out of my tongue and bunged my skull up pretty good, those were only flesh wounds. "Only flesh wounds," I never thought I'd hear myself saying that one...

The seizure seemed odd, so they CAT scanned me and found some kind of lesion. Two visits to my GP and an MRI later(pictured above), I found out about a lovely little tumour in my left frontal lobe.

In the appointments with Neurosurgeons and my GP that followed, nobody used words like "malignant," "benign," or "cancer," but I got the impression that whatever that blob is, it doesn't want to kill me in the near future. It's a slow growing thing apparently, in fact the bastard has probably been hanging around my pre-frontal cortex for a couple years now and I didn't even notice. Either way though, there's no nice way around any brain tumour. I repeat: there is no nice way around a brain tumour.

I'll be visiting my neurosurgeon Dr. Tucker again in May to hang out, maybe cut a hole in my skull, maybe pull the squatter from my grey matter so I can punch it in the face for all those years of freeloading. I'm told Tucker is a wizard. I'm waiting till May so I can take some classes this term and later graduate at some point. My mom e-mailed someone from NYU about second opinions and such, the woman e-mailed back, "I am glad to here that he went back to school and he seems to have a handle on this. God Bless him." I may or may not have a handle, but at least I've got Jehovah on my side. I am trying to do 5 courses for the first time in a while. It should be good, I'll have a whole summer to recover from surgery.

Another reason I'm putting it off till May is so it can be in proximity to my birthday. That way I can say I got a seizure for Xmas, a tumour for New Years and brain surgery for my birthday. Oh yeah, I'm sure this all sound pretty dire, but don't worry my sense of humour is on par with my sense of tumour. I have the unique opportunity to make certain jokes that would otherwise be untouchable without being absolutely insensitive. That's an upside.

They've got me on anti-seizure meds now. That's weird for me. I've been on medication ONCE since the sixth grade, and that was antibiotics for a chest infection last term. Besides that I've probably taken less than a dozen tylenol but THAT'S IT. I've never had surgery. I've never broken a bone. I have had a single stitch, just one, in my entire life. Taking pills daily is a strange adjustment for me. On the upside, I am now forced to schedule my life a bit. I take my pill at midnight, I go to bed at 1AM, I wake up at 9:30, I eat breakfast every day, I pack bag lunches complete with soy drink cartons (thanks Mom!). I can barely handle the organizational powers those pills grant me sheerly by the fact that I have to take them. That's an upside.

I'm constantly reminded of how many great friends I have these days. Coming back from holidays, you get a lot of "what's up?, how are you, how was your break." Never have those inane questions been so hard to answer. "Fine" always feels like a lie, so I end up blurting out something blunt and true. Everyone I tell has always offered support. That's an upside.


Summing Up

I'm optimistic.

But for some stress common to school, I feel physically fine. I look forward to playing some bars and hanging out at Imprint like usual. I refuse to let my life stop for this. Mostly I just find the whole situation hilariously fucked up or just annoying. Who the hell gets a brain tumour? What's the deal with that?

It was scary for a couple weeks there. At 20, I had to try to conceive matters of life and death. What do you imagine the face on a personification of Death would look like? I had never though about it before, but I imagine it might look like this:


...and that image is from my MRI. That face is mine.