One Never Knows What Can Be Around The Corner

In September 2003, I was working as a full time school librarian in a middle school on Long Island. I suddenly started to feel intense headaches that did not go away. I took Extra Strength Tylenol….Again still a throbbing headache.

I went to my internist. He totally checked me out and said, “Stress. You appear to be stressed, calm down.” Again I had the headache. I went to another doctor who said the same thing, “Stress, you must calm down.” I went to five different internists who all said I suffered from stress. I decided to see a neurologist who gave me a number of tests. He said the same thing, “Stress”. Somehow I was referred to a “neuro-opthalmologist” at Stonybrook University who examined me and prescribed an MRI with Gadolinium. When the doctor got the results, he told me to go back to my neurologist where he would send the results.

I met with my neurologist in his office to discuss the results of the MRI with Gadolinium. The doctor practically whispered the results to me. I had no idea what he said. He spoke so quietly. He said to me, “Yes, you have a “nodule” in your left Temporal lobe. I had no idea what a “nodule” was.

I asked the neurologist, “What is a nodule?”

The neurologist very quietly whispered these words to me….It is noted that I hardly heard him. He whispered, “A nodule is a brain 🧠 tumor”.

I still could not hear him. I told the doctor, “I still cannot hear you, can you write down on my notebook what you just said?”

He wrote down the words, “You seem to have a nodule. A nodule is a tumor.”

I started shaking when I heard those words. That was the beginning of a long journey I made in my life. I am still here to tell the tail.

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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.