Winter Songs

The Finale, for now

My hospital ordeal was a tough one, and making light of it here is like psycho-therapy. I want to complete this tale and add in a few other events of that summer that truly capture the scope of this nonsense.

While I spent the summer tucked into my ‘bachelor pad’, the rest of the world seemed to continue without me. My parents, were wrecks, and although they were there for me every day, my sister was put on autopilot. That is to say, that she spent the summer being cared for by friends, family and at least once, she was left in the lobby waiting room.

She went through a different sort of ordeal, but considering the neighborhood, I’m not sure that it was any less life threatening. So, as part of this self-imposed 12 step plan, I must apologize to her for that summer, and for many years after because I was over-protected.

However, the weather outside was either near 100 degrees and humid or rainy for most of that summer. I didn’t know. My wonderfully cool room gave me little hint of the world on the outside. I mentioned that Tom Seaver was a big part of my recovery. So too was a gift from a friend named Dara. All throughout the past year, I had a mad crush on her. She was gorgeous, she was brilliant and she was inpenetrable. Try as I might, and remember this is a naïve 12 year old trying to find the answer to the riddle of the sphinx, she was aloof and coy.

While I didn’t resort to punching her arm or any of the typical young male traits, I did lust over a picture of her hanging in a classroom. Her science teacher had some project where everyone’s picture was hung on a bulletin board. I have no idea what the project was, but I really really wanted that photo.

One day an envelope arrived at the hospital. Inside was a small note, and that photograph. I had a frame with a picture of my family sitting along side my bed. It was soon replaced with that photo. It was an amazing gift from her.

Another visitor that made a big difference was a man who was dating my aunt. He was a singer, and although had not made it big, was still a star in my book. He came to the hospital and in that room with the out of tune piano, gave an impromptu concert of my favorite tunes. Can you imagine a hospital floor with some guy pounding an out of tune piano and singing?? Neither could the nurses. Alan, if you are out there somewhere, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The walls on my room were very quickly filling with cards. Among them was a card that was a complete mystery. I opened the evelope and the name was unknown to me. When I asked my parents, they too had no idea. Was this the first case of spam? I wrote thank yous to all who send cards, but to this person, I said something like ‘thank you, and who are you???’. It wasn’t until much later that we found that this was the sister of someone we knew.

Many of my friends went away during the summer. They were at summer camps in New England and so had no idea what was going on. Two of them, send postcards from camp, and asked, ‘How is your summer?’ I had a good laugh at this and decided to write back in similar fashion. “I’m having a good summer, had a brain tumor, followed by brain surgery, see you in the fall...” Or something like that. I spent the rest of the summer picturing them reading this note from me, and doing a spit-take.

Speaking of spit, I neglected to tell you a very important part of this story. As the detail are only now oozing back into my memory, pretend that this is one of those flashback sequences they use so often on television… this blog is getting fuzzy and hazy and suddenly……..

Back in the ICU, when I first woke up, I told you that they quizzed me to make sure that my brain was still “on-line”. However, I must tell you that after all of that, and before they left me to go back to sleep, I did manage to ask one question. The nurses were concerned for me after that. You see I simply asked, “was it a boy or a girl?”

….less hazy, more distinct, the fuzziness clears and to continue:

As I spent the summer in the hospital. I was treated daily to a dose of radiation. Back then, the attitude was aim the x-ray in the vicinity of the problem and stand back. Very similar to using a back-hoe to plant daisies. At first they measured my head, and with a magic marker, made my forehead into a target. With all of the lines and arrows, I resembled a football play. A bald, football play at that. I was treated to 8 weeks (as an IN and OUT patient) of radio-therapy. As I’ve said before, while they considered this high-tech medicine in 1975, by today’s standards, it was a blood letting.

Finally the day came when I was going home. For the first time in a month I was wearing ‘real’ clothing, and from early that morning, paced and anxiously awaited the doctor to sign the release forms. He didn’t arrive until late that afternoon. However, the news he brought was wonderful. The tumor was benign and the radiation was going to incinerate it. Like a warden, he handed me a new suit, and $30 for bus fare. Okay, he actually signed me out of jail, the hospital. What a relief for me, but there were restaurants and other businesses in the neighborhood who lost big money now that my parents weren’t coming by to eat and pick up goodies for me.

It was August, I was out of the hospital and finally back in my own bed. However, due to the medicines I was on, in particular high doses of steroids, I had gained a huge amount of weight. The doctors failed to check for peripheral damage from the x-rays and it wasn’t until 20 years later that a doctor discovered that my metabolism was practically at a stand-still. That weight I had gained doubled, tripled and more, and dieting did nothing to reduce it. I want to personally thank Dr. Gold, my neurologist for fumbling the ball on the 1 yard line.

The next month was not only a return to school, but my bar-mitzvah as well. My hair, which had started to grow back earlier in the summer, had begun to fall out soon after the radiation treatments began. So here I was, puffy and heavy, a hair-cut that even punk rockers wouldn’t wear and a new school year to face. Try as I might to find that silver-lining, all of my clouds were quite gray for a while.

However, I did manage to get through of of that nonsense. I was quite sure that I was now safe because, after all, this kind of health tragedy doesn’t occur over and over. Little did I know. However, that’s fodder for another blog.

Thanks for reading this gastric discharge from my past. We have nice parting gifts and a copy of the home game for you.

Posted by bbrother at May 11, 2005 06:50 AM | TrackBack