PERSONAL UPDATE

I’m going to talk about recent events, but first I have to start with my past.

When I was in grammar school, I told my mother there was a thing, remember I was a kid, on my palet that got in the way of my chewing. It turned out to be a benign tumor. The surgery was quick, followed by a fast recovery. Accept for my falling in love with the idea of becoming a nurse I would have forgotten all about it. In 1978, the year I got married, I started having trouble walking. My shoes were suddenly too tight. I had an aggressive, non cancerous tumor going around my index toe, that is its name. The removal was more difficult than expected because the tumor had completely encircled the toe. I was lucky not to have any side effects. Then came the brain tumor. My son was four and it was located in the right temporal lobe. I was offered the option of watching it or surgery. I opted for surgery. At that time there were only a handful of surgeons who operated on that section of the brain. I went to Dr. Spenser of Yale New Haven hospital, the third best brain surgeon in the world. He removed it. I won’t go into the surgical details only to say it’s amazing I can talk, chew and see. It did have a side effect. You don’t need to hear about them either. Fourteen years later, checking into my frequent nausea, the doctors found a tumor in the base of my spine. Offered the option of watching it or have surgery; thinking it wouldn’t kill me to watch and surgery might stop me from walking, I chose to watch. A couple of weeks ago I went to see my present doctor. Here begins this years fun. My pancreatic enzyme levels are high. On my fathers side, his mother died of pancreatitis, her mother from diabetes. A cat scan to get a look at my pancreas revealed what was thought to be a tumor, that turned out to be only a cyst, I’m really not one hundred percent certain that’s any better. We’re watching this one. It also revealed that the tumor in my back has grown. The high enzyme levels are normal for me( I would have died by now if they weren’t), so I have to live with the frequent nausea I’ve had for a far back as I remember. I’m now faced with another big decision. Do I get the surgery I was afraid to have, now when I’m fourteen years older? Walking, and hiking are my two favorite things, after writing that is. Being stuck in a wheel chair would just about kill me, but for you my faithful readers, I just might have the time to write more stories. Maybe the next one should be about a person whose consumed by tumors.