The most difficult trial

Hello my name is Endrian Stanley Banks, and I have a brain tumor.

I was diagnosed June 24, 2011. Initially I was told by my doctors that my brain tumor was a minor and I didn’t have anything to worry about, then a year later I started having moments where I would blank out and not know where I was going. I also realized that I was losing chunks of time out of my life, for example I would think I had just done something and it had been maybe months or years when I had done the things that I thought I had just done.

I would have the most excruciating headaches and I could not function throughout these headaches. Light began to bother my eyes, noise begin to aggravate me as well as smell. And just when I thought that was the worst of it, I start having seizures and memory loss.

I found myself becoming more and more withdrawn from my family and from my children. I would lock myself into my bedroom and stay with no TV on, no light on just laying in my bed crying. I begin to lose hope because my doctors seem to be not listening to me it was as if they didn’t believe anything that I was saying I was going through.

Whenever I went to the emergency room with an extreme headache or seizures the staff would treat me as if I was a junkie because they were looking at the types of medication that I was on.

My family didn’t understand what I was going through, my husband didn’t understand what I was going through, and my children didn’t understand what I was going through. It destroyed my marriage because unknowingly I had aphasia and when my husband would ask me questions I didn’t know how to answer them or I will hesitate to answer them he thought I was lying to him.

In the mist of my storm, my husband is still with me. I am so grateful that people like myself that suffer from a brain tumor and all of the side effects are finally getting some help! Thank you to all the researchers, to all the doctors, and everyone that are now listening to our cries for help.

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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.