hearing on that side. If it weren’t for my father’s medical history,
I might not have been diagnosed for a while.
...................
My partner and I had met over our shared obsession with music.
We even got our favourite artists’ lyrics inscribed on our wedding
rings. But two weeks before our wedding, I was told I had a tumour
on my auditory nerve and would lose my hearing. The poetic
synchronicity of this isn’t lost on me.
I didn’t tell anyone besides family before the wedding, sure that it
would cast a cloud over the day. That it was still a celebration of life and
love amidst the cacophony of doom in my head is a small miracle. (Even
a wedding night spent in the emergency room, vomiting up champagne
and hors d’oeuvres due to brain swelling couldn’t ruin that.)
During my honeymoon, my aunt died of complications from a
congenital brain tumour. My sisters and I attended her funeral the day
after I got back. As my family poured out grief for my uncle’s loss, there
were also whispered lamentations about my news. “She was never
the same after she had the surgery to remove that tumour,” my uncle
sighed. I excused myself to have a quick panic attack in the bathroom.
The torturous wait for surgery had begun. Everyday life with a brain
tumour goes something like this:
9am: Wake up late with a pounding headache because of increased
intracranial pressure. You’ve cancelled all your jobs because of your
impending brain surgery, so there’s no point getting up earlier.
9.15am: Take a cocktail of medication to attempt to placate the
tumour. The stack of pill boxes is so ludicrously high that it looks
like a contemporary art project.
9.30am: Stagger over to the couch and remain ensconced for an hour.
2pm: Dang, that was definitely more than an hour.
3pm: Get up from the couch in search of food.
3.01pm: Get off the floor because, oh yeah, you can’t walk since
a tumour wrecked your vestibular system. Settle for a bag of stale
chips you found under the coffee table, instead.3.30-5pm: Nausea and migraine time! Please adjust your schedule
of moping and TV watching accordingly, because the pain will eat up
all your attention.
7pm: Take sleeping medication to try to blot out the recurring
nightmares about surgeons fiddling around in your brain.
Finally, I got a surgery date. The night before, I poured out a glass
of red wine, put my favourite Joanna Newsom album on the record
player, and listened with both ears for the last time.
I was oddly tranquil the next morning. I made a plant watering
schedule for my husband, lest the surgery did not go well. It was only
as I was wheeled into a small anteroom and the nurses began to
talk to each other instead of me that I knew it was on. My breathing
hitched up. The anesthesiologist misjudged his cannula. My blood
was everywhere. He cast around wildly for a common topic to discuss
as the room was mopped up.
“Do you like dogs?”
I felt myself laugh-crying....................
Last week, a year since I was diagnosed, I had radiation to mop up
the remnants that the surgeons couldn’t get out. I also celebrated
being married for a whole year. Our anniversary felt like it was also
a celebration of triumph over the lump of errant cells in my head
that had tried to kill me. We had a picnic in the botanical gardens,
laughing under jacarandas as butcherbirds sang in the treetops.
I couldn’t think of a better send-off for the past 12 months.experience