One year later…

It’s been a year since my father was told he had a brain tumor.  A year since we thought it had spread from somewhere else, undetected.  A year since I got the best news of my life, so far.  

Just before Thanksgiving 2007 my father had a really strange experience at work.  He found he had trouble spelling the word Lithium.  Most of us never even have to think about this word but as a Pharmacist for the Department of Mental Health it’s something he comes across daily.  And it’s spelled phonetically so… what could the problem be?  He also had trouble writing our last name and as his agitation grew concerned coworkers phoned my mother and I.  They feared he’d had a stroke and given that his first heart attack (which resulted in a quadruple bypass) happened when I was seven I was not really emotionally ready for this news.  Doctors checked him out… found nothing… we went on with our lives.  

Once the holidays were over his health became of concern again and that’s when they dropped the bombshell.  Brain scans showed a mass and by all tests it appeared to be a brain tumor that had spread from somewhere else.  Surgery was scheduled almost immediately and I think I held my breath for a week.  I wondered if I would ever see him alive again, if he would walk me down the aisle and dance with me at my wedding, cook for me again, anything.  We prayed to every God we knew of, sacreligious or not we were taking any help we could get.

The day of the surgery came and as I waited for any news from my mother I finally called for an update.  
“He’s out of surgery. He’s fine.  They didn’t find anything.”

_________________________________________

Time stopped.  ”What do you mean they didn’t find anything?”  That’s not at all what I expected.  When they opened his head and poked around as it turns out there was nothing there.  Some dead tissue, evidence of a stroke suffered at some unknown point in time. No tumor.  The only explanation being that the mass of tissue and broken capillaries, etc. showed up as a tumor.  Or maybe it was a miracle.  I like to think that it was.  Either way we’re very very very very very lucky to still have him.  He stills has trouble spelling certain words and typing some letters, mostly “H’s” and “N’s” for some reason.  I’ve included some images of his scars and bruising.  He looked like Frankenstein and it was hard not to grimace while I talked to him.

Living Memory

As I type my father is undergoing an operation to remove a metastatic brain tumor.  They tell us we could know as early as tomorrow where the primary cancer is.  That will be a huge relief since not knowing has been the scariest part of this experience.  I’m dealing with it through my art.  Hopefully I can stay focused through this project but today I decided to forgo classes since I’m freaking out pretty nicely at home.  In an effort to stay calm I’ve started looking through the photos I took of him this weekend.  No matter what happens he won’t look like this again for a long time.     



   



 

On a personal note:

Unrelated, though not completely, is a situation involving my father.  Right before thanksgiving he experienced difficulty writing and spelling at work.  Our first thought was that he’d had a minor stroke.  Doctors ruled that out but not before postulating on the possibility of numerous blood clots or some other cardiovascular problem.  They also told us he had less than 1% chance of a brain tumor.  Friday we discovered that he has a brain tumor.  It’s cancerous.   In fact, its a metastatic brain tumor which means that it has spread from some other part of his body.  We don’t know to what extent it has spread or even what it is.  It’s hard to focus on art and my future at a time like this but I’m sure he wants me to.  I’m considering doing a series I’ll call “In Living Memory”.  It’s not completely formulated in my head yet but I’m hoping I can preserve the way his life is now through photographs and maybe (if he’ll let me) follow him through his treatments.  It would be by far the most personal project I have ever undertaken.  I welcome ideas or support and hopefully I can post images as I get them.