The Thing About Lemons

So, I may not have explained at this time the whole reference to lemons and lemon-aid (yes, it was deliberate, thank you. No this was not a spelling error, it was a choice.)

When we were first told about my tumor, my little parasite, it was rather large. Post surgery, my morbid mind asked the doctor "How big was it?" You know, because that's something most brain tumor patients want to know. A lemon, he compared this thing to a lemon. "Holy batman! How in the ever-loving world did something this size sit in my head for, and I quote, decades?!?"

 

 

If you question my reaction, I calmly invite you to go to a nearby produce store. Pick up a lemon. Hold it in front of your face and take a selfie. Then look at the picture. Just to hazard a guess, much of your face will be covered by the aforementioned piece of citrus. Then imagine living with this for days, weeks, months, years, even decades. 

Questions from the doctor and his staff now begin to take on more ominous tones. "How are you still walking around?" "You really have only passed out the one time?" "What were you doing for a job?" "How do you keep functioning?" At the time I believed many of the questions to be facetious, lighthearted, joking around to keep things easy. Now, no not so much.

I recently saw the colored photos of my surgery that show the tumor sitting nicely abutted with my brain. I saw my nerves and the blood vessels giving it life  even as it tried to, unintentionally, take mine.

According to all statistics if you get a brain tumor, get a meningioma. Just don't get one like mine. It was big and quiet, and sitting just at the top of my brainstem. Many times through those harrowing 2 days we had miracles intervene. Those interventions, and I would say miracles of God, added up to equal saving my life and my identity. All this past the time when medical science would say it was possible.

People ask me how I am when they see me.  What else can I say but "Alive and kicking."

God bless and keep you.