Quite a Trip

Quite a Trip

Jan

It all started in September 2010. I graduated from Trade School, couldn’t find a job, I got really depressed…. felt forced to go to a real college and graduate from there. In the first week, problems started to occur… in the morning on the corridor, my head hurt, it felt like someone put a leather belt over it and tried to squeeze it, my temperature rose and I couldn’t concentrate. For a whole week, I always went home earlier, had my dad pick me up. Then I skipped class for an entire month and we went to a doctor, neurologist. We spend the next several months testing everything to eliminate other possible reasons for the pain. Then in March 2011, I had a Magnetic resonance imaging done, it showed that I indeed had a brain tumor. Left brain side, pretty tiny, but deep within. I went to the hospital, had to wait another week for another resonance imagining…. then came the surgery, and I left the hospital 3 weeks later… felt like 3 months!

What can I say…. people kept calling me brave, but I never saw a reason for fear. There was no other choice or way for me to go. If I wanted to live normally at long last, I needed to do this. True, there was a risk… that my right hand would become permanently shaky or I’d loose my right arm, which would be deadly to me, as a right-handed person wishing to become an artist, but then again, I could also die. I have big dreams that I want to come true and feel angered whenever something implies that I have to wait even longer for them, but… back then, for some reason, at the risk of my life ending there, all I could say was “I guess for all it was worth, my life wasn’t that bad”. As you can tell by this, I did make it out, and nothing’s wrong with me anymore. I immediately went to a different college. right now I’m on the third year, close to graduation, with hopes for the future.

People often say that it must have been a scarring experience for me, but … no. It was an experience that sort of shaped me, and nowadays I tend to laugh at all my misadventures in the hospital. Sorry if I can’t say anything more profound than this.

Opinions expressed within this story belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of the National Brain Tumor Society.