Because no one asked...

Back in late 2001 I learned I had a brain tumor. “Learned” it was there by losing my balance walking off the court after a 2-hr pick-up game of basketball. Just fell over. Didn’t know what to think. I was 32 and just fell over sideways for no reason.

Over the following weeks it happened a couple more times, & you know when you see stars after standing up too quickly? That happened every time I stood, without fail. Symptoms I didn’t recognize as symptoms.

Went to see a doctor and they just sort of shrugged. Vertigo, they guessed. Prescribed Alavert. Didn’t help.

An friend of mine since the 4th grade, a chiropractor, saw me leaning into walls and bracing myself on furniture and knew something was off. We’d grown up together playing sports and he knew how I moved. I wasn’t moving like that anymore.

My chiropractor-friend ordered an MRI, which disclosed a large mass occupying much of what should have been my left cerebellum, a part of the brain that controls balance and movement.

A subsequent CT scan outlined what turned out to be a hemangioblastoma—a tumor comprised of a dense tangle of tiny blood vessels that had inflated a cyst filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Look like a hot air balloon inside my head.

Other friends helped, too. A spinal orthopedist I know contacted neurologists he knew in Denver to ask if they had something wrong inside their heads, who would they want to operate?

Got lucky & was accepted as a patient by the one surgeon these doctors had all recommended. Surgery was scheduled (two surgeries, actually: one to try & embolize it, and a second to remove the damned thing). T-minus 7 days.

Who knows why but it was like a switch had been flipped: over those last seven days I woke up each morning with blinding, crushing headaches. The pain never went below 10/10. Never. Couldn’t talk. Could only breathe the air in little sips. Didn’t eat, didn’t drink.

As my wife left for work, I’d lie down on the couch with a towel over my head and both of us figured it was 50/50 whether she would come home and find me alive.

Just as bizarre, these headaches had their own circadian rhythm. They would subside at sundown, giving me 3 or 4 more-or-less normal hours every evening. I could sleep normally through the night but each of those 7 excruciating mornings/days was the same as the one preceding it.

In those normal-ish evening hours, I tried to record my dreams. Words failed me then (here I am, almost 50, and this is the first time I’ve tried to put these thoughts in writing), so I went with pen and paper.

Ended up with eight odd little sketches that look to me the way those dreams felt inside my head. Some were like needles, steel wool, shards of glass. Others were sand structures that would crumble at the slightest touch.

Long story short, the operation was a success. Still married to the same patient woman. Two children who make happy every single day. I’m lucky I had good insurance and live in a era of medical miracles.

The last drawing, completed about a month after surgery, followed the 1st night I slept for more than 3 hours in a row. Not sure if it’s of a memory I have of looking down at the Pacific Ocean during an overnight flight to Singapore or the sense of peace I felt, having survived.

Probably no lesson to be learned here. My stats may not be but I understand benign & cancerous tumors each acct. for about 50% of diagnoses. Of that 50%, (cont.)

hemangioblastomas acct. for around 1% of benign brain tumors. Of that 1%, 99% have a genetic syndrome I don’t have. How did I end up with a little monster in my head?

Cell phones, possibly. I worked in cellular then, the tumor was on the left side of my head where I hold my phone, and we used those old, high-RF models for 6+ hours each day—didn’t even have land lines.

Neurosurgeon told me the type of tumor I had is very slow growing, and based on the size it’d attained (a bit bigger than a Grade A hen’s egg), had probably been in my head for five years, which corresponds exactly to the day I started working in wireless.

Again, no real lesson here. Most people will never have any ill effects from cellular but in the same way some people who smoke 3pks/day ( #KeithRichards) never get lung cancer, there must be varying susceptibility to the effects of microwave-frequency RF. Lucky me.

Upshot: don’t use your phone too much. Use an earpiece. Regardless, it’s an honor and a privilege to be alive and have the opportunity to share all this with you fine people. You have the strength to survive anything. Be well and good night.