The First Doctor to Save My Life
(Or, what he said)
My brain was bleeding at the time, so forgive me if I do not get every detail right. But from meeting the neurosurgeon who would become the first doctor to save my life, what I remember most is that he was funny.
My mother and two of my sisters were in the room. There may have been others. I know I must have asked a lot of questions, but I cannot remember most of them now.
What I do remember is him saying, “I’ve done hundreds of these. This will be fun, I promise.”
I remember giving something slightly snarky back about how it would probably be more fun for him than for me.
He agreed.
After that, my memory narrows. Whether everyone else had left or my mind has simply edited the scene down to the two of us, I cannot say. I remember a cool room, dim light, a lot of blue. Mostly, I remember what I said next.
“You mentioned cutting along my hairline, so no one will ever really see the scar, and that’s great, but I need you to know something. I can’t lose my creativity. If I can’t write or perform or tell stories, I don’t know who I’ll be. I don’t even know if I’ll like her.”
He told me the surgery was happening in a completely different part of the brain than wherever my creativity lived. He said that if someone could choose where to have a brain tumor, they should choose exactly where mine was.
Obviously, I had nothing to do with where it landed. But the way he said it made me feel less like a case and more like a collaborator. Suddenly, this was not just happening to me. We were doing it together.
Then he said, “I have a strong feeling we’re going to be friends for a long time.”
That line gave me more hope than I had felt since racing to the hospital, vomiting because the tumor was pressing where it should not have been.
Later, in recovery, after telling me everything had gone perfectly, he added, “There’s no doubt you make work fun.”
I tried not to laugh, but I cried a little instead.
Making work fun had mattered to me for as long as I could remember. And in that moment, what he gave back to me was not just confidence in the surgery. It was the sense that even here, even like this, even with so much ahead, I was still me.
In case you can’t tell, YES, that’s a shark’s tooth, with a heart hanging from my neck.