I would hallucinate that the baby was crying when she was actually sound asleep. Days of the week blurred together as time was measured in four-hour increments of feedings and diaper changes. I developed a slight paranoia that my husband wanted to take the baby away from me. I cycled through the same three sets of tired sweatpants and pajamas. I showered infrequently and rarely had enough time to myself to clip my toenails.
When Isa was only a month old, we brought her in her car seat to my first consultation with the brain surgeon. I remember she hardly made a sound, as if she could sense that I was terrified. It was hard to accept that I could possibly be this sick, that someone who was seemingly healthy, had to sit in the same waiting room as all the actual brain cancer patients.
As we finished month three, just before stepping back into the light, I had to come in for a follow-up imaging. If the tumor had grown, I would have to go into surgery immediately, as it might indicate a more aggressive type of cancer. My husband arranged for a friend to stay home with the baby. As we drove to my appointment, I realized it was the first time we’d been away from her since she was born. Sliding into the MRI machine, as the clank of the magnets drowned out the rest of the world, I felt a sense of relief. For the next half-hour, I couldn’t be expected to do anything for anyone else.
The tumor had grown. I was scheduled for surgery at the earliest opportunity. The night before, I put the baby to sleep in her crib and tiptoed across the room to our bed. When I tried to close my eyes, sleep wouldn’t come. I struggled for about an hour and then rolled over to find my husband was also still awake. We agreed it was futile, so he grabbed the laptop and we watched a movie, tented under the covers, sharing a single set of earbuds. Our restlessness woke the baby several times, but now I was happy, even eager, to respond. I wanted to hold her, to nurse her, to soak up her baby scent. I’d be away for several days and at three in the morning, these were our final moments together.
Before the sun rose, I pulled her into bed with me and snuggled. I lay next to her and watched as she slept on her back, her big head crowned in blonde fuzz, arms flung out to the sides, her lips quiet and pudgy. The alarm went off and my husband shot out of bed.
Going into surgery, there were a lot of unknowns. Once the neurosurgeon had removed as much of the tumor as possible, hopefully without causing any irreparable damage, a biopsy would reveal what type of cancer we were dealing with. If it was aggressive, I’d need to start chemo and radiation immediately.
My survival was the priority, but I found myself hung up on the seemingly less critical issues, like, would I still be the same person on the other side of this?
I ran through the possibilities in my mind. Would I suffer some kind of damage that would make me extremely irritable? Would I still be the same person my husband fell in love with? Could I still be the same mother to my daughter? Would I still be able to write or speak with the same fluidity? None of these concerns could be fully assuaged until the surgery was over and I’d fully recovered.
That morning I dressed in a pricey loungewear set I’d bought myself—dark gray organic cotton pants and a matching cardigan for the cold hospital. Normally it would have felt overly indulgent, but new clothes made the morning slightly less formidable.
We left before the sun rose. My in-laws, who’d traveled to town, stayed at the apartment with the baby. The car ride was oddly silent without her. At the hospital, they took us back to pre-op, a staging area for patients going into surgery. I hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink anything since midnight, so I felt groggy and my voice cracked from thirst. In a curtained-off room, my husband helped me slip off my clothes, and together we wiped my body down with thick chlorhexidine wipes that left my skin aseptic and sticky. He helped me into a gown that tied at the back and, in one smooth motion, tenderly grabbed each of my feet and rolled on a yellow non-slip hospital sock.
A nursing student came by to start my IVs. She stuck me multiple times, and I bled everywhere, which felt like a bad omen. Next a tech taped electrodes around my body, to my chest, my head and my back.
As I waited to go back to the operating room, I sat in the hospital bed holding my husband’s hand and trying not to cry.
Early on, the surgeon explained that for part of the procedure, I would need to be awake. You see, the tumor was located in my left frontal lobe, near my language center. In order to remove as much tumor as possible without damaging any vital brain tissue, I would be woken up midway through the surgery to speak with a speech pathologist in English and Spanish (my second language). This way the doctors could see what was tumor and what was brain. Also, for this reason, I’d only be given local anesthesia. They had assured me that the brain itself does not feel pain, but there was a chance that, while I was heavily sedated, I would still hear and feel things. For example, I might feel pressure on my head as they cut through my skull.
The anesthesiologists, two men, one in a Bugs Bunny durag, came to my room to roll me away. I kissed my husband goodbye and lay in the bed as we passed through what felt like miles of white linoleum corridors sharply lit by those skinny fluorescent lights. Dozens of doctors, nurses, and techs scurried in different directions, either starting their day or ending a long night shift. As we traveled through, I tried to imagine if anyone else at the hospital at that very moment was also experiencing the scariest day of their life.
In the operating room, they slid me onto a cold metal table and then asked, what music would I like to listen to? There was a flat-screen TV hanging from the ceiling on a swivel playing Pandora. Under normal circumstances, this is my least favorite question because any choice elicits some form of judgment, like, “Really, that song?” Now, minutes before brain surgery, the pressure was unbearable. I told them they could pick whatever they wanted, and they chose Sia but before “Unstoppable” could play, it paused for an ad.
“Wait, you don’t pay for a subscription?” I asked, deeply concerned.
I slumped in bed with a fresh incision on the left front side of my skull that felt raw and throbbed when I tried to sit up. I was in a corner room on the sixth floor, where the plate glass windows looked out onto the mountains. My husband tells me it was a beautiful view. I might have savored it had I been able to get out of the bed. The only thing I saw was my feet under the white hospital blankets, the green and blue pattern of my hospital gown, and the dark walls illuminated by the flickering lights of medical gadgets and beepers.
After the surgeons successfully removed the tumor from my brain, it was sent to a lab to be biopsied. A team of medical experts reviewed the results and determined that my tumor was a Grade 2 astrocytoma. This was excellent news. My cancer was considered non-aggressive and slow-growing. Still, the doctors warned that my recovery would take time—and they were right. For weeks after, sleep was difficult, phone calls and screens were mentally exhausting, and I had to limit my socializing to family.
But right away, I was hellbent on breastfeeding my baby. So rather than just stay lying down, I would force myself to sit upright and pump and dump my milk. The cocktail of narcotics was too toxic for her to drink—but, of course, I had to keep pumping so that my supply didn’t dry up. Every four hours I’d ask my husband to help me. He’d push the button that raised the head of my bed and together we would position my breast pump. I’d go until either I’d gotten a decent amount of milk or I couldn’t stand the pain.
Even now, thinking of those nights, all I can remember is my throbbing head. I could have spared myself the agony and fed my baby formula, but I was being stubborn. Breastfeeding felt like the one maternal duty my body could reliably perform.
My tumor will eventually grow back. We don’t know when, but it’s not expected to do so for several years. When it does return, I’ll likely pursue radiation and chemotherapy. This is the best possible outcome we could have hoped for. It means that I have time to raise my daughter, pursue my goals, and reimagine my future. Many of the people in my life want the reassurance that everything is okay now—that I’ve been through the worst of it, that I’m healthy again. Something I’ve learned through out all of this is that the future cannot be defined in such simple terms. What I know is this: In the years ahead, doctors will monitor my brain with periodic MRI scans—and, when the time comes, we will be prepared to confront this again.
These days, I usually schedule my check-ups on Friday afternoons. That’s when I know my work will be slow and I can slink away unnoticed. Sometimes my husband drives me. I hop out of the car at the roundabout and stride through the hospital’s sliding glass doors. The hallway signs are a cryptic code that I’ve learned to decipher. I go down a long corridor passing elderly folks in wheelchairs and healthcare workers in all different colored scrubs. Tucked away in a far corner of the building are elevators that go down to the quiet belly of this busy building; this is where the MRI machine lives. I check in at the front counter, get my wristband, and sit alone in the waiting area. For whatever reason, the Food Network is always on.
When it’s time, an attendant peeks out from a set of double doors and calls my name. I follow them back and walk through a maze of white linoleum hallways. We arrive at a small room where each time I’m given the same instructions: “Remove all your clothes, underwear, and jewelry.” In exchange, I’m given a green and blue hospital gown (the same kind I wore after my surgery) and a pair of blue shorts made from a disposable paper-like fabric. The shorts are rather large, and I like to take a photo and send it to my husband; my stick legs poking out the bottom of the massive boxy shorts make me look like SpongeBob.
Once dressed, I wait in the little room for a nurse who brings me back to a different little room where I get an IV in my arm. They flush the line with saline, and I taste the familiar brine and plastic. With the IV in place, I make my way to the MRI machine.
The hulking equipment sits in its own room that smells like cold cement. I lie down on the narrow bed and the nurse gives me earplugs, and industrial headphones and tops me with a few warm blankets. Next, she presses a button that inches me into the body of the machine, like a slow-moving rocket the world around me is eclipsed by a large white enamel tube.
The nurse leaves the room and sits on the other side of a small glass window. Through my ear protection, I hear the muffled whirring and clicks. The machine hums and ticks like a hulking spaceship, pushing through the sky. All around me is a pure and untarnished white, like another world. A strange cold planet.
While inside, I think about the things I don’t usually have time for. Like what my daughter ate for lunch at daycare or if she’ll want to take dance classes when she’s five. I imagine a dream vacation in Chile for my whole family or what it will be like when we finally buy our first home. I try to avoid the heaviest thought in my head: whether or not this will be the MRI that finally reveals I am sick again.
Today, I reside in the world of healthy people. I walk out of the hospital as one of the lucky ones.
