Tumor

Note: this post was composed the day of the surgery, and published much later. To avoid confusion, I must direct you to the following post to find the happy conclusion to this saga! We are learning words like “resection”, “lesion”, “ataxia” and “Learmonth’s phenomenon”.

We pass them around like a hot dish of a grandmother’s brussels sprout casserole nobody wants to eat: “tumor,” “malignant,” “benign,” “the C-word.” 

“Brain surgery” is no longer one of Plato’s theoretical concepts, but something happening to our daughter, today. 

After that first scan I watched myself receive the words, “Unfortunately, we found something…”. I was surprised at my lack of panic. But then words came out of my mouth that I hoped never would, right there in front of my child. I was not prepared for this. I did not rehearse.

This morning I wake and the thought slowly forms in the pre-dawn as if from a script I am reading the first time, someone else’s thought: “lily goes for surgery today.”

I don’t know how to play this role. I can’t identify with this woman walking down this long hallway to the surgical suite beside a waif of a girl with a mass in her brain. I watch her and think, “That is the mother,” but I can’t imagine what she should be thinking or feeling.

The head surgeon, the one with the steel blue eyes, takes my hand in his huge one and fixes my gaze with his confident one. 

There is little to say. So I indicate the stuffy lily chose to keep with her and I say, without letting his eyes go, “She sheds glitter.”