My Friend Bob

I have a brain tumor. His name is Bob.

First the details: I had a seizure at work (very fitting of my dramatic personality) was unconscious and then some very nice paramedics came and asked me questions. I apparently gave them completely nonsense answers and then was very excited by the “seat belts” on the stretcher. I’d blame this on my brain being a bit rattled but the stretcher was pretty cool.

I was taken to the amazing Vancouver General Hospital where after some CAT-scans and an MRI I was diagnosed with a meningioma on my frontal lobe. This is the best possible place and type of tumor as its safer to remove and very likely benign(yay me!). I’ll be going in for surgery in the next month to remove it and should be back to normal (ish-for me) in a couple of months.

Now I had kinda been waiting for this to happen. Not only am I the BEST at the cognitive distortion of catastrophizing (blowing up every situation to the absolute worst) but a few years ago my dad died of a Arteriovenous Malformation (my family is getting really good at medical spellings) and it was potentially hereditary, so I of course assumed I had it. Little did I know that every headache, arm numbness and exhaustion was actually something, just not an AVM. So yay for catastrophizing, take that psychology!

Onto the more funny aspects of this situation.

Firstly, I’m currently writing a book about someone who has Fatal Sporadic Insomnia. It’s a prion disease that causes someone to stop sleeping and essentially turns their brain into swiss cheese. I’ve spent two years researching what happens to the brain when you lose parts of it, so theoretically that should have prepared me for gaining parts of it. It’s just the opposite right? I mean I do sleep way more, so kinda…

Another funny coincidence/irony/not sure it’s really anything…was that just before all this happened, I was buying a lot of books on essentially how to care a little less. I’m a A-type person who takes responsibility from everything at work; to Trump being elected; to too much rain in Vancouver (I’m so sorry, I’ve really been trying to figure this one out). I care about what everyone thinks, every situation and frankly even without Bob pressing on my brain, it’s exhausting. So I bought “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, didn’t read it but the week after I figured it out all on my own. Get a brain tumor. Now I don’t give very many fucks.

This is the hardest and most glaring aspect of this whole tumor thing. I’m a control freak and I literally have to give up control over pretty much everything (don’t worry, I’m still trying to control as much as possible, even if it’s just the type of PJ’s I wear that day). What I’m learning, not just at work but at home too, is that my controlling doesn’t just make me crazy, it takes away from other people. My husband is perfectly capable of putting on a duvet cover but I never gave him the chance to even try to figure it out. Actually, no one really knows how to do that, it is truly one of life’s great mysteries.

So my control freak has actually inhibited other people from learning and excelling. Which I guess is me trying to control them…If I’m indispensable , you can’t get rid of me, I just hadn’t planned for the impact I’d have if I was out of commission. Or maybe now I’m trying to rationalize a control and other people really don’t put too much thought into what or how I do things…I’m not sure, by the way, I have a brain tumor.

And I still feel responsible for the weather in Vancouver.

Back to odd coincidences, I had asked for an assistant at work the week before, obviously Bob was putting in his application through his seizure at work but that’s not the way my company accepts resumes, so unprofessional. He’s not getting the job. But in a massively screwed up way, this all semi works out in the long run. I’m sure no one at work feels like that but since I’ve been forced to give up control, people are learning new things and will hopefully come up with new ideas. But hopefully they’ll let me take back ALL control when I return. I have a feeling I’m not learning the correct lesson here.

What has been the most amazing part of this experience so far, is how many and much people in my life have stepped up. If you want to know how lucky a person you are, get a brain tumor. I mean don’t, they are at best super inconvenient and also they don’t really know how tumors form,, short of playing with medical grade radiation. I know it’s hard in these situations for people to know what to do but it’s really been the simplest things that have made a difference (also some complicated stuff, I had a friend drive my stupid big truck from my office into its tiny parking space perfectly, which even I can’t do some days). Things like bringing trash magazines, chicken wings, blankets, lunch, teddy bears, flowers, texts, phone calls and even suggestions like “No don’t feel like you need to watch ‘Peaky Blinders’ on Netflix, ‘RuPauls Drag Race’ is what you can watch.”

My control issues haven’t stopped, I have bought twenty t-shirts in the last week…despite having thirty already and being advised to buy button up shirts, as the hole in my head post surgery won’t be ideal for getting things over my head. Maybe I can make a quilt out of them all in the end. I’m also obsessively buying mountaineering books, nothing says your thing isn’t that scary as reading about someone ice-axed to the side of a cliff, without any hope for rescue and a tiny hope of getting to stand on the top of a rock. I mean I do stupid things like eat entire bags of chips but at least I’ll keep all my fingers and toes at the end of it.

 Now this is probably pretty rambulatory but guess what, I have a brain tumor so…I wonder what the statute is on brain surgery? I used to use the dead dad excuse for about a year but I’m thinking I’ll get at least two years out of this one?

“Yes I will be ordering the entire cheesecake for myself, I had brain surgery and thus have some empty space up there now,”

“I’m only three hours late to work because my malfunctioning brain needed to watch cat videos on Youtube this morning,”

“No officer, I don’t think it’s illegal for me to steal this Maserati because I just had brain surgery.”

Anyways, I’m sure this will all be a very interesting experience in letting go of control, allowing other people to do my laundry and filling out excel documents that only I possibly could understand. And at the least, maybe after all of this not only will I be a better person (insert gag here) but maybe even a better writer. I mean, I can’t get much worse.

Now where are those All Dressed chips…I’m eating for two now.

Originally posted - Feb 3, 2018