Back in the late 1990s, I was living in an apartment on High Street in Morgantown, West Virginia. Because of my mood swings, depressive episodes, suicidal tendencies, post traumatic stress disorder and social phobia, I was already on Disability Social Security. By the time I was 30, I was already very familiar with regular doctor’s visits, various medical tests, getting stuck with needles, taking massive amounts of medication, and hospital stays.
Morgantown is the home of WVU which is where I went after I graduated from high school. For a time I dreamed of going on to graduate school and becoming a philosophy professor. I also dreamed of becoming a writer. But by the time I hit my mid twenties, it looked like the only thing I was going to become was a professional psychiatric patient. The reason I stayed in Morgantown was because I was familiar with the place, living there provided me with independence, it was the most liberal town in the state of West Virginia, I was too scared and too poor to move, my parents lived a few hours away, and WVU offered great medical services.
By the spring of 1996, I was very isolated. I was no longer in school by that point, and most of the friends I had made while attending WVU had moved on. I stayed in my apartment most of the time. And when I did go out, I didn’t talk to people. I watched a lot of movies on video--the local public library rented them for a dollar--and I read books. The internet was already quite popular, and I knew this would be a good way for me to connect with people, but I just couldn’t afford a computer. So I was stuck. I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the rut that I had fallen into. But that May, something happened that made me realize my life was about to be turned upside down.
One night I had dream in which I saw myself in a hospital bed. That image startled me so much that it woke me up, and I was so disturbed that I felt the need to sit up for a while in the living room. It was while I was sitting up that I came to believe I had a brain tumor. I don’t know what made me think this, but I knew it was true. I just knew it. But I wasn’t ready to face it, so I stopped going to the doctor.
For nearly a year, I avoided the inevitable. I knew in the back of my mind what was wrong, but I pretended I didn’t know. Then I started noticing I was having a hard time hearing my parents when I talked to them on the phone. I had always held the phone up to my left ear, so I never thought to switch sides. Holding the phone to my left ear with my left hand seemed the most natural way for me to talk on the phone, so I stuck with that.
My parents eventually caught on that I couldn’t hear them very well, and they began to pressure me to go in for a long overdue checkup. I made the appointment and went to see my doctor, my GP that is, not my psychiatrist. I told him about my difficulty hearing. I didn’t tell him that I was sure I had a brain tumor because of a dream I had the year before. The man already knew about my mental health, so I assumed he would just think I was being crazy. Therefore, I kept my tumor dream to myself. My doctor was sure my allergies were causing congestion in my ears and that this was the cause of my hearing loss, so he prescribed a decongestant. But when I went back two weeks later, I was still having problems with my hearing. (And I knew why, but I wasn’t telling him.) So he had his nurse give me a basic hearing test while he was out of the room seeing other patients. A few minutes later, the doctor returned, and I could tell by the look on his face that the hearing test indicated something was seriously wrong. He told me that I was almost deaf in my left ear. And the fact that I was going deaf in just one ear was the thing that was most alarming. He asked if I had been exposed to any loud noises like a gun shot going off near my left ear or an explosion. I told him no, and he handed me an appointment card. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and I was to return to the hospital the next morning to see a specialist at 8:30 in the morning. I went home that evening knowing it was all about to blow up in my face. They were about to find my secret tumor, and they would want to do something about it.
After a series of tests that culminated in an MRI, what I dreamed the year before was confirmed. I had a sizable brain tumor on the left side of my head behind my left ear. The tumor had almost destroyed my left auditory nerve, and it was doing damage to my left facial nerve. It was also pressing against my brainstem. I was told that the brainstem was the most vital part of the brain because it was the most elementary. We don’t use our brainstems for brainy stuff like thought and speech. It’s not the magic part of our brains where beautiful art and extraordinary inventions are born. The brainstem is for things like the regulation of heart rate, breathing, core body temperature. In other words, fuck with it, and you die. The tumor had to come out.
I was 31 years old. I still thought of myself as a young man. I was often mistaken for a student at WVU. I was regularly asked what year I was in and what my major was. I still dreamed of going on to graduate school. I knew that my youth was slipping away, but I thought there was still time for me to make something of myself in this life. I dreamed about finding a man and living with him in a nice house somewhere. I was starting to think about becoming a father. But then I found out I had a brain tumor, and I feared the lights were about to go out.
On the morning of July 15, 1997, my parents drove me to Ruby Memorial Hospital, WVU’s main hospital. It was very early, and the sky was still dark, but you could tell that dawn was about to break. I walked from the parking lot into the hospital on my own. Aside from the hearing loss, some facial weakness, and some headaches now and then, which I was used to, I felt fine physically. There was a part of me that couldn’t accept that major surgery was necessary. I didn’t want them to cut my head open. I was terrified that they would ruin me or kill me. And the doctors didn’t sugar coat what they were about to do. They did warn that awful things could happen. I could even die. But the tumor was already threatening my life, so I went into that building, laid down on a gurney and let them do their thing. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I don’t trust easily. It’s difficult for me to ask perfectly harmless looking people for the time of day. But on the morning of July 15, 1997, I allowed strangers to put me to sleep knowing they were going to slice my head open and dig out chunks of something that wasn’t supposed to be there.
I was under general anesthesia by 6:30 AM. A few minutes later I was connected to a ventilator and catheterized. And my head was put into a vise. The surgery lasted about 13 or 14 hours. Two surgial teams switched back and forth throughout the day. I didn’t wake up until the early morning hours of July 16. I was afraid of dying on July 15, but on July 16 I hurt so much that I wanted to die. But I didn’t. There was a serious complication a few weeks later that required more surgery. And I didn’t feel like doing much of anything for a year. I had to give up my apartment in Morgantown and move back in with my parents. I lost all of my hearing in my left ear. I had to learn to cope with a constant buzzing sound. I became balance impaired. And the left side of my face was paralyzed. I eventually regained some movement in my face, but my appearance was permanently altered. However, I made it. I survived. And fifteen years later, I’m still here.
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