Feeling Alone & Tired

I was diagnosed with a Pituitary Tumor about three years ago. It’s been a long and tedious journey, especially with no medical insurance and not being able to get the proper medical care. I’ve lost my peripheral vision and the migraines are so debilitating, until the depression is overwhelming. I often wonder how many people actually know what it is to live with a foreign object in your head. To go from having a career, full of life, being a college graduate, to not even being able to drive yourself, because you can’t see. To add insult to injury, I can’t even have the surgery, because no surgeon will take me without insurance. The suffering is unbearable at times. It totally changes your life and the quality of life as you once knew it. You do your absolute best not to become a burden on others, so mostly you suffer in silence and pray a lot to the Heavenly Father to either heal you or come get you.

The moment you feel you’re ready to try to live again, your strength is once again depleted and your searching for the energy you once had. One moment they tell you the tumor is shrinking and you crab hold of an ounce of hope, only to be told later that you still can’t come off of treatment, lest the tumor begin to grow again. There’s so much more I could share, but I’ll stop there.

There’s not much of a support groups, that I’ve found, particularly in the African American communities, because either they don’t share the information or they don’t are not as forth coming about this particular type of brain tumor. At any rate, I await either a cure or a miracle from the Hand of God, until then, I remain in faith that God has His hands on me.

Benita Bradley

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