By March 30 I was doing well enough that talk of discharge from the hospital seemed realistic. During the previous six days I’d been admitted via the ER after experiencing a range of bizarre symptoms. An MRI revealed a lemon-sized malignant brain tumor, which had been surgically removed. By all accounts, this procedure had been a success. Unfortunately, surgery had left me with worse physical symptoms and new cognitive symptoms.

On March 28, I underwent brain surgery to remove a lemon-sized glioblastoma, a form of cancer known for its aggressiveness and incurability. Median survival time after diagnosis is measured in months. One reason for the abysmal prognosis is the high speed with which glioblastomas infiltrate healthy brain tissue.

MRI is by far the most important diagnostic tool for brain tumors, and for good reason. If you’re even suspected of having a brain tumor, chances are good that you’ll get at least one brain MRI. After diagnosis, MRI can be used to evaluate treatment efficacy. After treatment, MRI aids in surveillance, watching for progression, recurrence, or further complication of the original condition.

It may be hard to believe, but being diagnosed with a terminal illness whose median survival time is measured in months was not my biggest worry by late March 2023. Far more troubling was how far down the physical and mental fitness ladder I’d tumbled. I’d entered the ER just days earlier with coordination problems. Not only were my physical symptoms now much worse than before brain surgery, but new mental impairments had surfaced.

In the days following my brain surgery, I began to suspect that I may be missing some basic facts about my case. My first inkling was the term “neuro-oncologist,” which kept getting thrown around as if the need for such a specialist were obvious. Especially worrisome was how the possessive “your” kept getting prepended: your neuro-oncologist. Wait, why did I need a neuro-oncologist?

There are no doubt images more disturbing than parts of one’s own brain being sliced off and extracted through a hole cut into the skull, but on the morning of March 28, I couldn’t think of any. Over the span of just five days I’d gone from a more or less normal guy with odd coordination issues to a hospital patient with a cancerous brain tumor the size of a lemon. Leaving the thing there was a non-starter;

By the morning of March 24, the evidence pointed to a lemon-sized, cancerous tumor within my brain’s right parietal lobe. Its presence explained my symptoms in the weeks prior to visiting the ER. At the moment I was lying in a bed waiting to be admitted to the hospital. Clearly there was no chance of going home anytime soon. While waiting, still more neurological tests were performed. Squeeze both fingers. Stick out your tongue.

Late on the night of March 23, I was laying in a hospital bed waiting the results of a brain MRI. The day had been so far outside my normal experience that to call it “extraordinary” borders on trivialization. That morning I walked into the Emergency Room looking for an explanation for bizarre symptoms that were progressing rapidly. My doctors had ordered a brain MRI, to rule out “the scary stuff,” but it wasn’t going to happen for weeks.

I may forget things from time to time but large memory gaps are not something I’m used to. Even so, a few weeks after the events I’m about to relate happened, it became obvious that there were not just a few, but many gaps in my memory of what happened after getting past the ER room triage nurse. I could remember most individual episodes, but I couldn’t connect them together into a continuous timeline.

It’s very disturbing when your body starts doing things it’s never done before. Adolescence, pregnancy, and older age are all times when this happens to us. A little mental preparation goes a long way here, but not everyone is so lucky. How could anyone find themselves in a situation like this and not be at least a little embarrassed? I sure was. But more than shock or embarrassment, I felt an intense need to get some answers — fast.

Life-changing events are are easy to miss. This is especially true for the ones that come from nowhere. They don’t fit into any of the compartments we make to hold the things that experience chucks at us, and so they just disappear. Only on reflection do these otherwise forgettable episodes take on the landmark status we remember them for. Warning Shot An event like this happened to me recently.