What I wish I had known about a craniotomy is that sometimes a second craniotomy follows; then you belong to the Double Craney club, the club no one wants to be a member of.
There is no class or video or pamphlet that outlined the personality shift that will follow. And by personality I mean, the way one opens the microwave door, walks through the house, eats a meal, or just sits. Just. Sitting.
In my uglier moments, why are you sitting like that?
Perhaps it goes without saying that he would need to learn to walk and talk and swallow over again. My husband has always had the most beautiful penmanship, like his mother's, but now it's chicken scratch, yet, not such a huge price to pay for buying yourself time in this beautiful world.
Looking down the barrel of a gun, going into that brain surgery, after a lobectomy a few months earlier, he characterized it to himself as "a walk in the park. Let’s do it.' Those were his exact words.
He could be a Nike spokesperson. Not kidding, and it’s not bravado or show.
But I don’t think we understood that things happen that are hard to anticipate. In our case, Chris came out of surgery with a paralyzed vocal cord, reduced to just "lazy" these days. So begins the cancer game, what caused this? Was it the intubation, or was it the right occipital lobe resection? Missing cerebellum matter the size of a strawberry brings loss but what exactly has caused the painful feet throbbing at night? And why doesn’t it happen during the day?
I see myself in other members of my lung cancer Facebook group? Does anybody know why…??? So was it the second brain surgery, required to repair a brain bleed, that took out the piece of his personality that I'm missing?
One traumatic brain injury is enough, but a second crack to the gray coconut is a controlled motorcycle accident. It's like being an extra on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Where is my husband and who are you?
Bits of it have been hilarious. Our first meal out after his surgery found us at a local breakfast spot for pancakes. He asked the server for a Horchata, on par with ordering Osso Buco at Denny's. He was crestfallen to hear that they didn't serve this Mexican drink in their establishment. For the next several meals out, he would ask for Horchata, and be visibly heartbroken that they weren't offering such a unique drink. In all of our years together, he has never even mentioned Horchata, let alone ordered one out. Out of sync with time and place.
Bits of it have been hilarious. Our first meal out after his surgery found us at a local breakfast spot for pancakes. He asked the server for a Horchata, on par with ordering Osso Buco at Denny's. He was crestfallen to hear that they didn't serve this Mexican drink in their establishment. For the next several meals out, he would ask for Horchata, and be visibly heartbroken that they weren't offering such a unique drink. In all of our years together, he has never even mentioned Horchata, let alone ordered one out. Out of sync with time and place.
We married later in life, had children even later. Many of our preferences were well-worked out. We have always had a gentleman's agreement that the kitchen sponge would be wrung out; never left sopping wet to sit idle in the sink. Now this, on top of everything else? Where is our marital contract? Do your part!
At 7 PM, like clockwork, Chris turns into a pumpkin, having mustered his resources all the daylight hours. The tongue is a muscle - it gets tired. I slink off to read, write, or journal. A new short fuse, the filter is fatigued and the four-letter words fly. Yet, no matter the rough night he has, he wakes up cheerful and starts the day again.
It's not all bad because there’s much to learn from watching the terminal decline of a loved one.
For sure, the Covid quarantine has been a BOGO shit sandwich: all of us under foot, witnessing the wretched cancer fight. The silver lining? Witnessing the wretched cancer fight.
New word for the day: immunohistochemistry