Two Years Later

It has been two years now since I first experienced the symptoms that would later be diagnosed as a brain tumor.  And while I wouldn’t say that my life is markedly better now—indeed, sometimes it seems much worse—I met a lot of wonderful people during the process, made new friends, and reconnected with old ones.  If anyone asks, I know exactly which medications will help with nausea during chemotherapy, and I have been in the MRI machine so many times that I am now an old pro at having scans.  I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, or the best-looking, or the wealthiest person you’ll ever meet, but I am skilled at one thing:  surviving.

Scanned

One month after I completed my radiation treatments, I went back for a follow-up MRI of my brain.  I am relieved to announce that the doctors found nothing of note—they think that my brain is looking fine, albeit different given the surgery and treatments I underwent.  The current plan is to continue with a scheduled chemotherapy regimen as well as intermittent scans to make sure I progress normally.  And based on the type of tumor that was removed from my brain, the scans will be used to make sure it doesn’t reoccur.

And yet despite my clean bill of health, I can feel myself slipping back into the depression I thought I had left behind me several months ago.  I feel trapped in a life that just won’t let me get ahead.  The book I started writing fizzled out after 36,000 words or so, well shy of my 60,000-plus word goal.  The editing and publication of two other completed novels seems a slow, laborious process that I can only hope will provide some reward to go with the risk.  My book sales have been decent if not spectacular—then again, they never were spectacular, but merely just enough to get by from month to month.

Masks

In life we wear many different masks.  As children we wear various Halloween masks—I was mostly a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, though once I went as Garfield and twice as a vampire, no mask required.  As adults our masks become emotional:  we feign being happy, healthy, or satisfied when we are anything but.  We pretend to be excited or overjoyed for others’ success when in reality we are dying inside:  resentful, jealous, or even bitter that we are not experiencing the same thing.  But I am here today to tell you about a different kind of mask, one that is very much real and physical.  It is a white, plastic mesh mask that I wore to receive twenty-nine radiation treatments into my brain.

The mask was placed onto my face as a warm piece of plastic, which the therapists then molded into shape.  Each morning before going into the machine to receive treatment, I would lie flat atop a table and have the mask locked down so that my head was unable to move.  This act, while not necessarily comfortable, was essential to my treatment; it made sure that the radiation was delivered to the precise spot necessary each and every time in order to destroy any microscopic cancer cells that might have remained after the removal of my brain tumor.  For the first few weeks I would receive a scan prior to the four-minute treatment.  For the last few weeks, as I began to respond to the treatments, my scans were cut down to two per week.  But for the final six treatments, the radiation was delivered in more accurate six-minute doses.

The radiation, much like the mask, causes some irritation and discomfort, but you understand going in that the process is for your benefit.  And considering that I, in my perpetually-anxious state, didn’t expect to survive the craniotomy, well, everything else since October 13 has felt like a gift, a blessing, and a second chance at life.

Hair Loss

I don’t suppose I am a vain person in the conventional sense, though I do try to make sure I look decent (read: put together) when I leave my home to go somewhere.  One warning they gave me when I was fitted for my radiation mask, however, was that it could cause scalp/face irritation and hair loss.  Interestingly enough, it wasn’t until my third week of treatment that the hair began to break off and get everywhere.  It started on Thanksgiving, and around the incision in my head.  I still had some hair in the front for the next day or so.  But with each subsequent shower, more and more hair has come out in my hands, in the drain, and everywhere else.  The good news is that hair will grow back, and I am not completely bald; my head is simply “fuzzy” now.  But I have never had a shaved head in my life—I was born with a headful of hair—so this has been yet another interesting adjustment in this period of my life.