Dear Readers,
That Saturday began like any other day. I got up, ate breakfast and went to give blood at the blood bank. I was feeling achy, but who wouldn't feel tired when a six year old comes to sleep under your armpit in the middle of the night. I felt nervous, but I always fell nervous when I give blood because sometimes it makes me dizzy. But as the morning wore on, I began to feel fatigued- more fatigued than I had felt in a long time. And my neck began to hurt. My neck began to hurt almost like I had suffered whiplash or something, but again...a kid had slept in my armpit all night. So, like usual, I just went to give blood.
But then, my blood pressure was high, extremely high, and it wouldn't go down, 186/128. Very scary numbers. The nurse shook her head as she sent me to my docs, who in turn sent me to the ER, "Just to be safe", he stated. But at the ER, the PA and Doc there were dumbfounded, "You're as healthy as a thirty year old...I don't feel comfortable though just getting this blood pressure down....we need to run a CT...something just isn't adding up."So I tell myself, whatever they'll just run a few more tests. Worse case scenario, I stay overnight. So Tim and I casually joked in the hospital room and never truly thought anything serious was wrong.
Then the Doc came in. Now this guy is no normal doc. He's the guy who had seen myself and our children through a number of scary things...husband dies, pregnancy scare, ruptured spleen, appendicitis...and never ever would I not trust him or his judgement. But this time when he walked in, his face had changed. The smile was gone. He was serious, weird serious. I noticed at that moment how he had aged. The years of youth had disappeared when he became that somber and the fatigued of his job, and the horrific things that he had endured were present as he slowly sat down and and moved his stool towards me.
"The scan did not come back well. There is a mass. Quite a large one at the base of your skull behind your right ear where all your pain is..." Color drained from my face. I began to feel nauseous. I began to feel strange. I looked at Tim and watched him swallow hard."We need an MRI rather quickly and I want to send you to a bigger hospital...." I couldn't speak. I didn't hear. I flashed to my mother's deathbed, her cancerous, lonely deathbed. My hands started to sweat. My kids. My life. My husband. My grand kids. Mass, tumor, and then fear. Crazy, crazy fear. Fear like I'd only known a handful of times in my life. Oh Lord, I prayed, don't let me lose my life. Not now, I have so much to do....
I came back to reality to hear the doc say good luck as we drove to the larger hospital. "It's okay Honey. let's not panic until we know what this is...", Tim kept saying. But it was too late. I had already let panic sink in. I wanted Virginia, the only Momma I had known in many many years. So I began to call, call all the people I treasure before it was too late. A mass in my brain. Death. Living past fifty. Sweaty. Frightened. Plans. I had to make plans. I had to let them all know how I felt about them. I couldn't leave stuff unsaid. I couldn't, not like Jeff.
"Mom, " I began....and we talked and she begged to come with me and I wanted her too, but it was too late. We were already out of our small town and on our way to the larger hospital. Prayer chain. Yes, I wanted her to call the prayer chain. Yes, I was beyond frightened. So was she. She was crying. I could here her voice cracking. Yes, tell the family. Tell them all. Yes, I would let them know when we knew anything.
And so we kept driving and it felt like an eternity. I knew it wasn't an aneurysm, the doc said the mass was different than that. I knew I wasn't in immediate danger, the doc said that too. But I felt so weird. Foggy almost. And the fog wouldn't lift....
I was put in the wheelchair. All the other sick people who'd been there hours just stared as they wheeled me into a room. They tagged me...one for the hospital....one for fall risk. Was I a fall risk? They said I was. It bothered me. Really bothered me. Was I naughteous? I began to gag. The nurse handed me a blue bag. Where was Tim? I felt his hand holding mine as they whisked me into my own private room to wait for the MRI. It was all happening too fast.
The room was quiet. I asked Tim should I tell the older kids. He thought I should. Yikes! That meant he was apprehensive about this mass as well. And so it began....the hardest conversations I've ever had to have with my babies. It was also the hardest nonconversations I've ever had to have with my little ones. I am awful at being brave. Little did I know, my faith would be tested for the next six months in more ways than I could ever imagine....
Telling my babies...
