The Diagnosis

In April 2007, I had some pretty severe headaches that were waking me during the night. Several nights in, when I got up for the Advil, I noticed my left foot was not “working right”. I went to the doctor the next day.

 

One checkup, a CT scan and an MRI later and I was on my way to Brackenridge hospital to the emergency admittance area, to meet a neurosurgeon that would be awaiting my arrival.

 

I had a brain tumor.

 

Nobody was more surprised than me. I had just spent the last 18 months at The University of Texas at Austin. While on the 40 Acres, I was busy exercising my mind and my body, not to mention completing my long overdue undergraduate coursework.

 

An immediate angiogram confirmed the diagnosis. It was a tumor – on the brain stem and approximately the size of a racquetball. It was being estimated to have been growing slowly for at least 10 years.

 

One craniotomy later and I came back to consciousness in ICU. I had a breathing tube down my throat because the surgeon said it had proven to be more complex than originally thought and that my body had not responded well to all the anesthesia.

 

I was so doped up on painkillers that the first week is pretty hazy. My parents were there, so were my twin sisters and, of course, my fiancée. Overall I remember feeling pretty good. At the same time, I could tell by looks on my family’s faces and by the heavily restricted visiting hours that things were more serious then I knew.

 

Being the sports addict I am, I remember the NBA playoffs being televised. In a brilliant stroke of genius designed by some TNT exec that knew I was cooped up in ICU, the network showed replays of each night’s games. I “watched” doubleheaders and then watched them again to catch the action that I missed while fading out on painkillers.

 

My knowledge of my situation was limited to my own personal experiences. The good news was that the headaches were gone and my surgeon came in daily to pronounce that I was “looking good” and that he was projecting a 100% recovery. The tougher news was that I was tied down in bed, my left eye was patched because it wasn’t working, I had a feeding tube up through my nose and running all the way to my intestine because I could not swallow, and my lungs had refused to work without the ventilator and I was still on the breathing machine. I could not talk with the tube down my mouth and throat, but they gave me a spelling board and it gave me solace that I could spell faster than my nurses could read. Sounds like a small victory, but considering I just had major brain surgery, it felt like a big win!

 

The next ten days were marked by a tracheotomy, my first try at walking and a move up to “Modified Intensive Care”. I had to use a walker to get out of my room, but was told it was because I was weakened from being in bed for two weeks.

 

I kept improving after the move upstairs and received the first piece of big news since surgery. They shipped my tumor off to a lab and after cutting it up and examining it, they confirmed that it was not cancerous!