They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But sometimes the amount of lemons you get is just ridiculous.
Life is pretty absurd if you think about it. I mean when is it ever smooth sailing? When do you ever think to yourself, “I have no problems. Everything is fantastic!” You don’t. And if you do, I guarantee the next week you’ll find yourself in a car crash or losing your job or just having a super annoying hangnail that won’t go away.
So this life seems designed to bring us lemons. It makes us stronger, more empathetic, wiser.
But that seems like a really crazy system.
I’m creating this blog to help deal with the bushel/truckload / crap-ton of lemons that arrived on my doorstep Tuesday night. My goal is to share information and try to get through this with my sense of humor (and hopefully my brain) intact.
I have a brain tumor. Seriously. It sounds so preposterous . But I found out on Tuesday night that I have a 6cm x 4cm tumor in the back (occipital lobe) of my brain. My MRI was scheduled at 5:15pm and I fully expected them to confirm that I was having ocular migraines. I’d been having weird wavy things in my peripheral vision every couple of months, and occasionally a headache. But the last one I had in January lasted over a week, so I thought I should get it checked out.
The opthamologist said, “it sounds like an ocular migraine”. That made sense. Lots of people in my family have migraines. But then as my husband, Gil, and I were driving home from the hospital on Tuesday at 6pm we get a phone call.
“Hi Jennifer this is Dr Allen” “Hi Dr. Allen, you’re working late” (Uncomfortably) “well yes. I just wanted to let you know that they found a large mass of cells in your brain” “What? How big?” “A large mass of cells in the occipital lobe of your brain” “Sorry, I don’t remember my biology, where’s that?” “In the back of your head. It controls tour visual processing which is why you’ve been having some vision issues”
I asked a few more questions and he told me that I’d need to see a neurosurgeon right away. (Right away?!?) and he was going to refer me to the best neurosurgeon in town (but I live in Portland, OR so really how many neurosurgeons could there be?).
What has followed in the three days since is a series of phone calls with friends, family, doctors. I’m gathering little bits of information as I go. After serial dialing the neurosurgeon for the last 3 days, I have an appointment this morning. It’s 2am right now, brain tumors suck at making it easy to sleep through the night. I hope today to have a plan and to know more.
If you’ve made it this far in my story, you likely care about me and want to help. Thank you. I’m going to need it. Let me tell you some things that are/are not helpful:
1) not helpful: googling my condition and then looking at me with sad eyes and saying, “I’m so sorry”. Please, please, keep this light, friends. More helpful is to say, “WTF? That’s so crazy! I have a friend/brother/step cousin twice removed that had a giant ass brain tumor removed 20 years ago and they’re fine. “
2) not helpful: “let me know what I can do to help”. first of all, I have no idea. Second of all, I’m not going to ask you to come over and fold the giant pile of laundry I have waiting for the laundry fairy to fold it and put it away. Admittedly, I need to get better at asking for people to help me with mundane things like laundry, but you, as my friend, need to be better about trying to guess what I need and then just do it. If you show up at my door and say give me your laundry basket, I might cry a little because that is so overwhelmingly nice, but I will give it to you. And pace yourself with the help wagon. I think this will be more of a marathon than a sprint.
3) helpful - make A LOT of jokes. My strategy for the last 3 days is to treat this as a farce. I mean, I’m taking it seriously and all, but if you think about it, it’s pretty damn funny. I can just see God saying, “so you think you’ve got things under control down there? Well, how are you going to deal with this? Blam! Brain tumor.
I see your brain tumor God, and you know what? I’m laughing at it. And I’m also going to use it as my “get out of jail free card” whenever I want - you want me to do the dishes? “Can’t tonight, my brain tumor is acting up.” Did I say something inappropriate? “Sorry, it’s the tumor talking”. I’m thinking about making a line of shirts that say, “be nice to me, I have a brain tumor.”
So to recap - no sad eyes, no googling, no asking Me to tell you what I need, and lots of jokes.
To be clear, I am scared, I am overwhelmed, but I am hopeful. And I am going to need you (just don’t ask me what you can do - at least not yet).
My heart overflows with love for you. It sounds corny, but it’s true. Thank you for loving me and being there for me and giving me space to laugh and to cry. Thank you for telling me and believing that it’s going to be ok. Thank you for supporting Gil and my kids, because they are having a rough time of it too. Thank you for sharing stories of others who have overcome. I appreciate you. I love you so much.
Now that the headstone has been placed, you are welcome to visit Jennie's grave at Beth Israel Cemetery (426 SW Taylors Ferry Road, Portland). Her grave is up the hill from the parking area, near the top and to the left, close to the treeline.
It is not customary in Judaism to leave flowers at the grave; instead, visitors are encouraged to leave a small stone as a sign of remembrance or respect.
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