Brain Tumor

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving two years ago.  I was sitting at my desk at school.  The students had just been dismissed and left the building, thank the Lord!    I was exhausted and so happy the day was over.  The days leading up to a school break and after the break are crazy.  Right now I’m looking out my window watching the wind scatter leaves all over the backyard.  It reminds me of what it’s like after a school break, teachers chasing kids all over the classroom.   Just when you think, you have some of the kids settling down to start a lesson, here comes another gust of wind and it starts all over again. Don’t get me wrong, teachers enjoy the breaks, but they do pay a high price for them too.

So I’m at my desk and my phone rings.  It was the neurologist. It was the weirdest conversation. He asked, “Is this Michele?”  I said, “Yes.”  He asked me where I was. I answered at school in my classroom.  He asked if there was anyone with me.  No, I was by myself.  He asked, “Do you have a friend in the building you can go to?” Without question, I went to my friend’s room next to mine. Wondering where this conversation was going, I sat down and told her I was talking to my doctor.  He asked if I was sitting down, that’s never a good sign. I still had no clue what was coming. 

You have a brain tumor.  He kept talking but I didn’t hear a word he said.  I just kept thinking over and over in my mind, “brain tumor?  What?  Really, a brain tumor?”  I mouthed to my friend, “brain tumor.” We just sat there in shock as the doctor kept talking.  Finally I snapped back and heard the last part of the conversation with the doctor.  He said I’m having seizures and that he had already called in medicine to the pharmacy.  I need to pick it up and start taking it immediately. I’m still on that same medicine Keppra, just a higher dose.  I’ll probably be on that for life. He gave me his phone number.  He asked if I was okay.  I answered not so convincingly, yes? 

I called my husband and told him what the doctor said.  He was like me “A brain tumor?  What?  And then started asking me all these questions I didn’t have answers to.  I told him I didn’t hear anything passed brain tumor.  I gave him the doctor’s number.  I was in complete shock, as you can imagine.

My mom came from Tennessee to Oklahoma to spend Thanksgiving with me and my family.  As I said before she took me for my MRI the day before Thanksgiving.  She had only packed for a few days with plans of going home on Sunday but something convinced her to stay.  She was in my classroom waiting to take me home.  I hadn’t driven since the seizure at the football game.  I went into my room trying to think straight.  She asked “What’s wrong?”  I told her the doctor called and said I have a brain tumor.  We’ve got to go pick up medicine at the pharmacy.   I’m not sure if we even talked all the way there, I just know we were both in complete shock.  I remember her face when I told her, the strain to keep it together but fear showing through.  

And that’s how I found out, I have a brain tumor.