Blogging with the best!

Intro: The week and a half leading to diagnosis, were somnambolustic, drenched in unreal days, groggy and sleepy but without sleep. Everyone taking pills or drinking to sleep a few hours a night. The sweep of events from the discovery of the tumor, to the MRIs, to the day of the surgery, to the appointments with unknown agents of medicine (Doctors). Trying to keep a head above the deluge to make decisions, ask questions and pin-down doctors. It felt like we were dumped into a water slide, with high walls and no lights, the water choking us and the way terrifying, but with no escape. We just kept going.
ACT TWO:

Puppet theatre!
(Cue circus music, ba-ba-ba-da-da-da-rummpa)


Pop! A floodlight illuminates the tiny stage as red velvet curtains peel back to reveal a family tableau set against the backdrop of a doctor's office. Here sit the parents, the father flipping through an tiny issue of Sunset magazine, distractedly, the mother's anxious half-smiles flitting across her face while her eyes remain flat. The adult children occasionally try to say something clever or comforting to alleviate some of the incessant strain, that hums, buzzes and fills the silence.

The Doctor sweeps in quickly, as if he had no strings, his wake ruffling the pages of the magazines and carrying in it the company of his nurse. He is small and graceful despite being short and plump, well-groomed, middle-aged with olive skin and balding hair. He is wearing the most elegantly pointed clown shoes that have been crafted from a single piece of soft black leather, pointy enough to skewer a hot dog or clean small dusty cornes.
(As the music plays, the Doctor moves toward the center of the room, twirling into a seat at the final drum beat hits)
He turns to the family, his large dark brown eyes, contacting each person in crammed in the examination room. It is his show. The results of the biopsy.

Doctor: Hello, I see we have the whole family here. (Pause, looking around- eye contact) How are you, Cindy?

Cindy: Pretty nervous, waiting to hear the results.

Doctor: Well, I have the lab results and I'm sorry that your tumor is a glioblastoma multiforme, this is an aggressive cancer, its fatal.........

(The Doctor asks a few more questions, apologizes and as the music starts again, wheels out of the room)

End of Scene.

At this point, we've heard what we came to hear- results. Leaving things in the hands of cancer doctors was both necessary and unacceptable. The approach to health and the body chained to an interpretation of life through an sterile lens. Instinctually, talking, we all knew there is so much more. Up next: As my mom said, "Holy holistics, hope!"

Oh Yeah - That Positive Thing

So all pumped up from my first posting, I find that I promised to blog on some positive manifestations of having brain cancer - what was I thinking? I should have done it right then in my blog-o-phoria of the moment - ah well. The thing is that it's true that having cancer is the proverbial roller coaster - mostly self-propelled! Climbing that steep slope for a glimpse of the top is a matter of continual mental iterations - "I need to recount my blessings, my advantages." They are:

• Having a wonderfully supportive family
• Being in otherwise good health
• Having a great employer and health insurance
• Being able to afford the medical care that I choose

But now to the secret weapon in my arsenal, the serendipidous discovery of a naturopathic oncologist right here in Eugene - one of only 29 in the country - and this due to Gretchen's wandering around downtown one day in a giant funk and spotting the small storefront that said Clinic of Natural Medicine. She told the receptionist about my cancer and asked if anyone there could help - her response was to have me come in right away! Shortly after, I had my first meeting with Tina Kaczor, and for the first time since my diagnosis, Hope! Holy Holistics!

And now, A Revival : Springtime in three short acts

Every time I am making some progress on putting out another blog, I find that reality has gotten flipped over again, like a potato bug on its back, flailing legs thin as eyelashes to get right-side-up. Or sometimes like the keys on the keyboard have all slid onto the floor like beads from a broken necklace and I'm just pounding my fingers on a plank of plastic. In any case, here are words for you! A synopsis, a breakdown, a holy revival of the last few months in three parts:

Act One:
March 2008- Blue skies and sun touching my skin and hair like a reconciled love after a winter of cool detachment. The kind of glorious day that is golden and carefree, spending hours as if there were no end to them. I'm visiting friends in Portland and getting ready to travel. After a year of living out on the north coast of Oregon, money has been saved, a plane ticket has been bought, the jobs quit and guidebooks perused. Despite the years of vague but intense dreams about South America involving mountains, blissfully weary feet and spectacular Spanish language skills, I found that I was unconvinced I would actually go. I had confessed to a friend that in the edges of my thoughts, I was worried about my mom. She kept talking about how she couldn't seem to get over her cold and she had balance problems, as well as running into things on her right side. Not enough to create real worry, but nonetheless, something unresolved poking away at the ol' subconscious.

Getting into my car to drive back to my house in Astoria, I find that there are several messages from my mom on my cellphone, each increasingly drawn with anxiety.

• Message one: "Will you give me a call when you get a chance? There are some things that are going on that are a little strange."

• Message two: "Call me, I need to talk to you."

• Message three: "Gretchen, just call. Call as soon as you can it's important."

Sitting in the car in North Portland, panic starting to swell from the spine, threatening to explode in a cascade of morbid possibilities. In the middle of dialing my mom's number, I lose track of myself and feel I have tuned into channel 34. "These are the Day's of Our Lives.....the soap opera introduction becomes my mom's voice.

"Mom, are you okay?" I ask hearing weighty breaths on the other side of the line.

"No, I'm not." My mom responds, her voice cracking. "I have a brain tumor."

The words oh my god, come out. I am reading the script, to a ridiculous and melodramatic take on life. Next thing you know one of us will be pregnant and another hypnotized into committing 'Murder!' I think I'll play along with this, expressing words that seem appropriate to the insane conversation taking place. Unfortunately, it was true.

Mom blog 1

Well - after that stellar introduction by my beloved daughter, this is my first humble submission to our joint venture. No where to start I guess, except at the beginning. On March 5 of this year I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and, by the the 10th, had had surgery to remove it. Although the surgery was largely successful, we have come to learn that there is very little good news with this disease - it almost always comes back -and that fairlyquickly! I am now post-radiation and into my third round of chemo. We have also come to know that conventional medicine has a pretty limited arsenal against glioblastoma multiforme tumors - quite a mouthful so from here on, aka GBM! If there are some of you GBMers out there, I'd love to here from you, as support groups for those with brain tumors seem sadly absent! I've already decided to title my next blog "Serendipity", as I'm slowly coming to believe in this phenomenon I once scorned as forced coincidence. Just a little teaser about some of the positive things that have come about! I love you, Gretchen!

Hello...testing...1...2...3...

July 10, 2008- So...ahem...sending words out into the dark, bottomless sea of the internet is intimidating. I feel like I have been asked to give a toast and I can't think of anything at all to say, my lack of grace apparent in the way that I am babbling without content, slumped at the computer, pulling at my lip in hesitation and self-doubt. Okay, okay....This blog is an attempt to encapsulate, tie-down, lasso, stuff into an envelope, pin down like a biological specimen, kidnap and lock in the back of the dumpy Camry, what happened when it turned out that my mom's sinus infection was actually a malignant brain tumor.

The bottom fell out...that's what happened and there on the sidewalk was the shape of what was our lives, scattered and bruised, the paper bag that held us together, ripped. Being thrust into a medical emergency was so baffling, disillusioning and scary that my mom and I decided that we should be recording the experience somehow. Partly to connect with other people and partly to try and digest it ourselves. I can only speak for myself, ultimately this is my mom's experience and I will let her speak for herself. However, I've decided that I would try to be unguarded and honest about it all. Gut spilling, slander and maybe a few hyperboles, wouldn't be a proper blog without them, right?

So this is a flippant tone to begin with, but I'm just warming up...