All Over the Place

by Geraldine DeRuiter

  Few vestiges remain of the Scandinavian fishing village it once was, those having been replaced by trendy restaurants that refuse to take reservations and at least twenty-three places to get a cup of coffee that aren’t Starbucks (and five that are). But the occasional bearded hipster will walk by in braids and leather boots, channeling some long-forgotten Norse god, and I’ll be reminded of everything it once was.

  My technician for my MRI was tall, blond, and altogether far too handsome to put me at ease. He had a hint of a southern accent (“Louisiana,” he explained, which was entirely unfair of him. I am happily married). I told him about my headaches, and he repeated my doctor’s words of comfort: it was probably nothing.

  That made me feel marginally better.

  If you’ve never had an MRI, it is an entirely strange and futuristic experience. The machine operates through a series of magnets, so you have to remove any scrap of metal from your body. I’d taken off my watch and wedding ring, and swapped my jeans for scrubs. I ditched my underwire bra and prayed Mr. Louisiana didn’t notice. I pried the jewelry from my ears and nose. (Afterward, I found myself staring at three identical hoops and couldn’t for the life of me figure out which went where. Already, I had too many holes in my head.)

  You lie down on a sort of dolly that’s parallel to the floor and will be loaded, with you on it, into a huge plastic tube.

  If you are a claustrophobe like me, I highly recommend that you have a brief talk with the technician to establish an understanding that in the event of a zombie apocalypse or earthquake (I regard both as being equally likely, a result of watching Night of the Living Dead at a tender young age), they agree to come get you out of the machine. Failing that, they’ll at least scream so you know to climb out yourself instead of just lying there, waiting to be eaten. Or crushed. But let’s be reasonable: eaten is way more likely.

  I know it seems like I’m trying to make a joke here, but I have had many, many MRIs, and before each I have had that same critical discussion. It’s important to be an advocate for your own health.

  Zombie emergency protocols firmly in place, you lie down, and someone jams earplugs into your ears. I know that seems like the sort of thing you want to do yourself, but believe me: you very much want a professional jamming those things in. I realize that all the times I’d ever put in earplugs, I’d done a half-assed job of it, whereas the technicians shove them in so far that they’re basically knuckle-deep in your ear canal.

  After the earplugs are in, they place a pair of giant headphones over your ears, which is as close as most of us will ever come to knowing the glory felt by those people with the glowing wands that help direct planes at the airport. The headphones are connected to a microphone in the technician’s center so they can tell you what’s going on and alert you in the event of earthquakes or zombie attacks, as they promised. Miraculously, you will be able to hear them through the earplugs.

  Then—it’s up to you at this point—you can choose to have a blindfold put over your eyes. I always choose a blindfold, which is rather out of character, but it’s nice to know that sometimes you can surprise yourself. Normally, if you’re about to be loaded into a strange tube that makes you easy pickings for the undead, I’d understand you wanting to keep your eyes open so you can fight them off. But with brain MRIs, they also lock your head into a plastic case that looks sort of like an old-fashioned birdcage. If you are a claustrophobe, the blindfold comes in handy because you can pretend you are actually lying in a much more spacious place, like a coffin or the trunk of someone’s car.

  Next, the technician will hand you a small rubber bulb-like device to squeeze if you need to be let out of your plastic prison. I don’t know if it actually works, but it serves as a very effective security blanket.

  And then you are loaded into the massive tube. You can feel the track moving beneath you and the light (as it comes in through the blindfold) dim. The only thing you need to do is lie perfectly still, which is incredibly easy to do unless someone has told you to lie perfectly still, at which point it is fucking impossible.

  Once inside, you can’t breathe too deeply, or swallow, or flinch, or wiggle your toes for fear of messing things up. Once the scan starts, so do the noises. An MRI sounds exactly like putting a chainsaw into a garbage disposal, or possibly the passionate mating sounds of a fax machine and a semiautomatic rifle. Sometimes the sounds are softer pulses. Sometimes the noises are so loud the entire machine shakes (while you, feebly, try to remain perfectly still).

  Forgive me for bragging about this, but that first MRI I had—I rocked the hell out of it. I was motionless and serene, my breathing shallow, like at the end of a yoga class but with significantly less farting. It helped that, at the time, I felt perfectly calm. I was just in there to confirm that nothing was wrong.

  Roughly a week later, I would learn another valuable lesson about getting MRIs: hysterical crying immediately prior to one is a terrible idea. Snot drips down the back of your throat, and if you try clearing it or swallowing, you move too much and mess up the scans. But that usually only happens after the second or third MRI, and if those are necessary, I feel that tears are understandable.

  But during that first scan, I felt completely at peace, an unlikely by-product of my upbringing. I’d spent the first part of my life convinced that everything was trying to kill me, and now that I’d survived the obviously deadly activities of trick or treating and college, I no longer had a reasonable sense of risk or my own mortality.

  After the scan was over, I changed back into my clothes and headed back to my car. Because Seattle isn’t so great at city planning, and Ballard is no exception, it turns out that one of the best views in the neighborhood is actually from one of upper levels of the Swedish Hospital parking lot.

  And as I came across that view, I stopped to look at it. In the coming months, I’d meet my friend Chad, who has brain cancer. One of his most salient pieces of advice was this: “Stop and smell the fucking roses.” Take a moment to appreciate how damn beautiful and wonderful the world around you is, and how fantastic it is to be alive. Back then, I didn’t know to do things like that. It didn’t occur to me. But on that afternoon, for whatever reason, I did.

  The clouds were high-altitude and stippled across the sky. The breeze felt warm, and the air smelled like summer was on its way. For the first time that year, I didn’t need to put on my coat.

  There, in the parking lot, I thought about how nice it was to be home. About how no place in the world felt like this, and how, if I ever had to leave for real, I’d be heartbroken.

  I know. In hindsight, it sounds positively contrived, like a scene added into a movie to build tension. But as I stood there, all I could think was how wonderful it all was and how lucky I felt. Sometimes, life can be weirdly poetic like that.

  Before I left, the dishy Louisianan told me not to worry if I didn’t hear from them for a while—it didn’t mean anything was wrong. Scans just took a while to read. I’d probably receive a call the following week.

  The phone rang the next morning. It was my doctor. The scans had shown a 1-centimeter nodular lesion on my hypothalamus.

  I had a brain tumor.

  10

  IT’S ALWAYS EASIER TO LEAVE FOR A TRIP THAN TO BE LEFT BEHIND

  THERE ARE THINGS THAT YOU can imagine yourself saying.

  Things like, “Why thank you, yes, I will take a fifth helping of dessert.”

  or

  “I have no idea how Jeff Goldblum’s entire collection of boxer shorts ended up in the trunk of my car, Officer.”

  And then there are things that you hope to say one day, like:

  “Oh, you are too kind—but if anyone here is a comedic genius, it’s you, Ms. Fey. Or may I call you Tina?”

  or

  “I am so glad that our all-female Supreme Court declared thong underwear unconstitutional.”

  And then there’s shit that you never imagined saying, but somehow, you end up saying it. I’m guessing ev
ery single person who’s ever uttered “I’m getting a divorce” or “I think this is raccoon meat” has felt this way. The words leave your mouth, and they don’t sound real.

  And so it was that in the spring of 2012, I sat at my desk and found myself typing these words:

  “I have a brain tumor. I’ve named it Steve.”

  The standard reaction to this revelation went something like this:

  “What the fuck do you mean, ‘You have a brain tumor’?”

  Followed quickly by, “Wait, why Steve?”

  As for why I named it Steve,… well, duh. What else was I going to name it? There is no one to whom I am particularly close who is named Steve. I’ve never kissed a boy named Steve. I’ve never uttered the phrase, “Steve, I love you.” And Steve is nice and short and easy to add to a long list of unrepeatable words. Behold:

  “Fucking goddamn miserable piece-of-shit Steve.”

  See how well that works? It kind of rolls off the tongue. And considering how many big words I was dealing with at the time, I was inclined to stick to something short and sweet and monosyllabic. Besides, the technical name for Steve is a bunch of words I could barely pronounce. When we first learned of him, some overzealous radiologist thought he might be glioma, which is a word that you should not, under any circumstances, look up, because it is bound to lead to an absolutely miserable few days. Trust me on this.

  At first, no one even called it a brain tumor, much less by its given name. Not yet. They were describing it as a “nodular lesion”—a medical term that was virtually meaningless, and therefore far less frightening. Naturally, I took to using it.

  “I have a nodular lesion. I need to get it biopsied to make sure it’s nothing worrisome.”

  This was far less scary than the alternative: “I have a brain tumor. I’m going to have brain surgery, and they’re going to cut the sucker out to see whether or not it’s fucking brain cancer.”

  But eventually the T-word started to take hold, and both my doctors and I started using it. Over the course of a week, I had a series of appointments with different specialists. They asked about my family history. They made me squeeze their fingers with each of my hands. They checked my balance and my ability to follow a flashlight with my eyes.

  Rand was with me for those appointments. Trips had been canceled; meetings had been rescheduled. This was unprecedented. As grateful as I was to have him there, I was freaked out by his presence, too, because it was a clear indication that something was wrong. Rand didn’t take days off from work. Ever. But there he was, at every one of my of doctor’s visits, asking questions while I stared off at the exam room walls. I didn’t quite grasp what was happening. Looking back, I still don’t.

  It was Dr. Foltz, the neurosurgeon who was reviewing my case, who said, after looking at my MRIs, that the surgery would be routine. There was a slight chance of brain cancer—relatively small but still there. The biggest issue was the location of my tumor—it was in a highly problematic place, and according to my most recent MRI, it was creating blood vessels, which meant it was growing. If doctors hadn’t found it now, they would have. Like the photo of me from when I was seven and had a mullet, it would come to light, eventually.

  I still had trouble accepting the severity of it.

  “Just for my own personal benefit, what are the odds that this was a Lego I shoved up my nose when I was three?” I asked Dr. Foltz.

  “It’s not. We’d be able to see that pretty clearly on the scan.”

  I’d just learned another important lesson: neurosurgeons are not usually known for their sense of humor.

  “We can take this out for you,” he said calmly, in his even, soft tone that I still hear sometimes when I think of him. As though he were a dentist, extracting a bad tooth.

  “This shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Oh, good,” Rand said, trying to feign optimism as he squeezed my fingers.

  I sat there quietly, unsure of what to say or do.

  It would become a trend.

  I WASN’T SURE HOW TO prepare for my surgery. I mean, pragmatically speaking, I knew. Dr. Foltz had given me a printout with specific instructions for the night before. I had to wash my entire body, in particular my scalp and hair, with a special antibacterial soap that was runny and pink and left every part of me dry and brittle.

  I had to change my pillowcases and sheets that night and on a nightly basis after I got home.

  To make sure that my stomach was empty before I went in, I couldn’t consume anything after 9 p.m. (not even water). I had to remove all my jewelry and couldn’t wear any substances on my body—not lotion or deodorant or perfume.

  All that was fairly easy—a checklist of items that I could cross off one by one. It was everything else—everything that would happen between learning I needed brain surgery and actually getting it—that I was unsure about.

  I needed to tell people. But I didn’t know how. Rand would soon prove to have an easier time than I did with the task, and before I’d even mentioned it to my family, or any of our friends, he called a company-wide meeting and told all his coworkers that I had a brain tumor.

  The only hitch was that he’d neglected to tell me about the meeting. I found myself receiving condolence emails from people I barely knew, about what I thought was a private matter.

  I was livid. I remember being in the kitchen when I found out what had happened.

  “You told everyone you work with? And you didn’t think to check with me first? My mom doesn’t even know.”

  Rand stared at the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  I wanted to be angry—but I couldn’t be. I couldn’t add that on to the pile of everything else Rand felt. It was becoming apparent that this was harder on him than on me.

  It was the same when one of us went on a solo trip—whoever stayed behind always felt it more acutely. Dinner alone at home is worse than dinner alone in a new place. At home, you can’t escape the fact that something is missing; the house is full of reminders in a way that strange cities aren’t. And that’s what Rand was terrified of. Being left behind. Alone, surrounded by souvenirs of us.

  Besides, I didn’t really have the bandwidth to be angry, anyway. I felt that the tumor was taking up valuable real estate in my head. There was only so much room left, and the other emotions—worry, mostly—had squeezed into the space where anger used to fit.

  I hugged him. It’s something we tend to do on those rare occasions we’re upset with each other. Sometimes we hug. Sometimes we hold hands. It’s difficult to be angry at someone when you are in the process of actively cuddling them. Toddlers, I think, know this instinctively.

  “I fucked up,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said, as he pressed his face into the curve of my neck and shoulder and shook his head. And then curiosity got the better of me.

  “How did they react?” I asked.

  “They were all pretty shocked,” he said, his voice still quiet, his lips muffled by my neck. “Ruth cried.”

  “Aww. I love Ruth.”

  I thought of her, with her soft blonde hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She had a countenance of apple-cheeked sweetness belying a steely sense of resolve and a tendency to tell people to fuck off without hesitation. I had reduced one of the toughest people I knew to tears.

  I wrapped my arms around Rand’s neck, his face still buried against me. I felt his tears against the collar of my shirt.

  Make that two.

  RAND HAD INADVERTENTLY GOTTEN the ball moving. Many of our friends worked with him; they now knew, as did their spouses. He’d created a strange line of demarcation between who was looped in and who wasn’t.

  I needed to tell people what was going on. I didn’t want someone to hear it from a third party or think I’d hidden it from them for some reason.

  I started by making a few phone calls. I should have told my mother in person—a right she had earned. When you help make something, you are entitled to
a face-to-face visit when it goes in for repairs. But it was far easier to downplay the situation over the phone.

  “The doctor found a small growth,” I said, once again avoiding the T-word, “and they’re going to biopsy it. There’s a teensy chance it might be cancer.”

  “Where is it?” Mom asked. “On your breast?”

  “Um… no.” I took a breath. “It’s on my brain.”

  “Your brain?” Mom repeated it as if she had heard me incorrectly.

  “It’s just a little brain tumor,” I said. Happens every day, Mom. Hell, you’ve probably got five of them right now—

  No. That’s not the right approach.

  I called my aunt and started with the same spiel. Small growth. Small chance of cancer.

  “Where is it?” she asked. “On your breast?”

  God, NO. What is it with you and my mom and breasts?

  “On my brain.”

  “Your brain?” Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Use the runny pink soap every time.

  Overall, though, my mom and aunt handled it pretty well. Then I called my brother Edward, who promptly freaked out.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said.

  “WELL IT SURE SOUNDS LIKE A FUCKING BIG DEAL.”

  There was something inexplicably touching about him yelling at me. Screaming, as a friend of his recently noted, is Edward’s love language. He only shouts when he cares. Or when he’s mad at the Internet.

  But the vast majority of people in my life found out through the blog. It seemed like the easiest way to convey information without breaking into one of those reckless cries in which snot drips down from your nostrils and you don’t even really care. I wrote:

  The good news: the neurosurgeons say there’s an 80% chance Steve’s benign. If he’s not benign, odds are he’s still very easily treatable.

  And then there’s the very small chance that he’s a more aggressive kind of brain cancer (on the plus side, he’s tiny. I think we can deal with tiny and aggressive. Hell, I am tiny and aggressive).