"PERFECTY CLEAR."

I'm still savoring these two best sounding words from my neurosurgeon.

Stable, no changes.

I've tacked my radiology report to my office wall as additional proof that the "ex" as in suspected residual meningioma brain tumor, isn't welcome back. Ever.

I'll take stable and uneventful any day when matters of my upstairs arrangements are concerned.

And speaking of milestones, it's a bit surreal to be writing today when I reflect on where I was excactly seven years ago when I received that phone call.

Allow me to share an excerpt from my forthcoming (T-2 months!) book, Curveball: When Life Throws You a Brain Tumor.

From Chapter 1: Out of Left Field

The ball shall be a sphere formed by yarn wound around a small core of cork, rubber or similar material....It shall weigh no less than 5 nor more than 5 ¼ ounces and measure no less than 9 nor more than 9 ¼ inches in circumference. -Official Rules of Major League Baseball

I am more than familiar with this definition. My husband Mark, a former major league ballplayer who pitched for 15 seasons, spent a considerable amount of time manipulating that five ounce sphere. As his wife, I've grown as comfortable recognizing its size and shape as he has, whether watching him effortlessly throw a 90 mph fastball off the mound at the formerly and appropriately called Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, or offering up a nasty slider from behind the rusty chain link fences in Aragua, Venezuela.
So the irony wasn't lost on us when we learned I had something similarly sized growing inside of me. The shock however, is still as palpable as it was that day I first heard four life-altering words.
Even though it was over seven years ago, I still can't shake the memory and the overriding fear I had one February morning when I fumbled for the phone before the sun had even risen.
"You have a meningioma," the voice on the other end stated gravely and evenly.
"A wh-what?" I stuttered.
" A BRAIN TUMOR," the voice continued, sending chills down my spine.
"How do you even spell that?" I wanted to know as I desperately searched in my nightstand drawer for a pen, a pencil-ah heck, a lip liner would do.
Men-in-gioma sounds more like a group of guys test-driving the latest foreign import with all the bells and whistles, not to mention the 8.9% available financing option.
If only it could have been that simple.
"Oh honey, what is it?" Mark asked, with the same fear registering across his face.
A flood of tears washed over me.
"I ha-have a brain tumor," I eked out. "A brain tumor with a funny name I don't even know how to say."
Mark fought to maintain his composure.
"I'm going to die," I cried harder.
"Honey, slow down, slow down," Mark tried reassuring me. "Let's just wait until we meet with the doctor and see how serious it is first. Try not to get all worked up."
How does a person not get all worked up over a brain tumor though?
I took a long hot shower. I turned the dial until the water boiled. My limbs turned beet red. It didn't matter-I had no feeling.
I pulled on an old pair of jeans, gray turtleneck sweater, gray socks, and my blue and gray hiking boots. Gray to match the day and my mood. I resembled a TV commercial for clinical depression. The only difference being, there was no change in the before and after like on TV. I walked downstairs thinking, what do you even begin to ask a neurosurgeon?
Just a few hours later, Mark and I sat in horror as my newly appointed neurosurgeon translated my MRI. Never-before heard terms literally went over my head.
Middle third sphenoid wing meningioma.
Cavernous sinus.
Midline shift.
Lateral ventricular compression.
You'd have to be a brain surgeon to understand any of this stuff. Thankfully, Dr. Timothy Fullagar was.
"Wait, I have a neurosurgeon?"
"A guy who works on brains for a living?"
"What was he going to do to mine?"
"He doesn't look much older than me!"
"Hang on, to get to my brain, he would have to..."
I couldn't go there. I looked to Mark for comfort, but all he could do was grip my hand even tighter. His expression was as blank as mine felt.
I forced myself to look at the snapshots of my brain illuminated in Dr. Fullagar's office. I was shocked as the images of a baseball-sized mass (maybe it was a baseball?) glared back at me in defiance. The size and pressure of my tumor was so great it had actually shifted my brain to its mid-line.
"You've probably had this tumor for over a decade," Dr. Fullagar continued in his monotone, neurosurgeon voice.
"A decade!" I choked. I had a "roommate" living inside of my head for 10 years? The only roommates I ever recalled having back in college were the ones who shared their English Lit notes with you and offered aspirin and a glass of water after a night of one too many beers.
There had to have been some sort of mix-up. A serious mistake. I couldn't get out of my head the Kindergarten Cop scene in which Arnold Schwarzenegger shouted, "It's not a tumor!" I so wanted to believe this. But this wasn't a fictional movie.
It was real life and it was mine.
Our lives had been rudely interrupted by a brain tumor and the need to have brain surgery. BRAIN. SURGERY. BRAIN SURGERY. My tongue fumbled each time Dr. Fullagar repeated, "Brain surgery is recommended as soon as possible."
If he hadn't already been booked--I thought you only booked dinner reservations or airline tickets--Dr. Fullagar would have operated the next day. He reminded Mark and me of the urgency of my situation.
His eyes shifted to Mark's. "Any longer, and you could have awakened one morning to discover that your wife had already slipped into a coma." Mark and I looked at each other with a chilling realization of what was at stake.
However, Dr. Fullagar did explain that if you were going to have a brain tumor--I don't ever recall this being a conscious choice on my part--a meningioma was the best kind to have. Oh yippee!
My first crash course of the day--brain tumors. The not so bad, the bad, and the really bad. A meningioma is considered benign for the most part as they grow on the meninges or outer lining of the brain, rather than attaching themselves to the brain. But in my case, since my meningioma had been growing for as long as 10 years, it had time to get comfortable and used to its surroundings. Sort of like breaking in your favorite easy chair or pair of jeans.
Mine was affecting three critical areas-my optic nerve, carotid artery, and my sinus cavity. Surgery would be long and risky, but I didn't have a choice.
"Is it cancer?" I stammered.
"Can you remove it all?" Mark asked next.
Dr. Fullagar said my tumor wasn't cancer and that he was confident he could remove it all, but cautioned that he wouldn't really know until he was inside of my head.
Inside of my head. Those words penetrated me to the core. Dr. Fullagar used a model of the brain to explain how he would evict the uninvited guest that had taken up residence.
Neurosurgeon speak continued to float over my head.
Surgical debulking.
Embolization.
Preoperative and postoperative seizure prophylaxis.
I had a feeling I'd soon be mastering a new foreign language. Meningioma had already been enough for one day.
Then came the second crash course--seizures. I had been experiencing unexplained "episodes," periodic moments of déjà vu or strange visions. Sometimes I'd see the color of leaves more vividly or shoppers at Target would appear to suddenly speed up and zip in and out of the aisles, as if someone had pushed a fast forward button on life. These episodes only lasted 20 to 30 seconds so I had discounted them.
Dr. Fullagar explained they were actually simple partial seizures and they were quite common in frontal lobe tumors. Seizures? Surely not, my understanding of seizures was frothing at the mouth and uncontrollable convulsions.
Mark and I walked out of that office not saying a word--we knew each other well enough to know words would be of little comfort to either of us. We just didn't know where to begin.

To be continued.

Thank you for sharing today with me--a day I honestly didn't believe I'd experience seven years later.