If I Could Change One Thing…

I would change what happened to my daughter.

In June of 2020, my daughter had brain surgery to remove a baseball size tumour.

She has said it is one of the toughest things she’s ever experienced in her life.

It’s not easy for her to slow down. She’s been a go-getter since she started working at age sixteen.

In hindsight, there were many signs that something was seriously wrong with her health, but no one ever imagined or expected it to be a brain tumour.

All her headaches were easily explained: migraines, tension headaches, sinus headaches from her allergies, and whiplash from being rear-ended in a car accident.

She suffered nausea and fatigue, but again, always explainable, that female time of the month, working too hard, stress, etc.

But her health kept getting worse until she was in daily pain with no relief.

She saw a doctor who prescribed muscle relaxers and pain medication. She spent the weekend in bed. Got up on Monday, and forced herself back to work.

Again, no one ever thought — brain tumour.

It wasn’t until she experienced left side numbness that she went to emergency. From there, things rapidly deteriorated.

She had what would later be described in her medical report as a generalized tonic-clonic seizure and was placed on Keppra.

She was sedated. Intubated. Given a CT scan, and later an MRI. The neuroimaging revealed a large astrocytoma that had a hemorrhage in it.

A brain tumour.

That call from her husband dropped me to my knees. I was so afraid my thirty-five year old daughter, the mother of two young children would die.

Everything happened so fast.

Because of Covid19 restrictions, no one but her husband could be with her in the hospital.

Of course, I kept asking Why? Why her? And all I kept coming up with was words from a song: “the answer is blowing in the wind.” Why not my daughter? It happens to someone’s child, why should it not be mine?

The next day, post-admission, she was brought back to consciousness and told she needed brain surgery, and informed of the possibility the tumour could be cancerous.

This is my little girl who has always been squeamish, afraid of blood, and of sleeping alone as a child.

She was informed of the risks of surgery: death, stroke, loss of function, weakness, paralysis, personality changes, speech and language problems, bleeding, seizures, and infection.

The next day she had a bifrontal craniotomy.

This was her first surgery.

They shaved her ear to ear, over the top of her head, where she’d be left with a scar, a permanent headband. Fifty-seven staples closed the incision.

All went well in surgery.

A frozen section in the OR was suggestive of an oligodendroglioma, final pathology was pending. Medical and radiation oncology consults were sent to the Nova Scotia Cancer Centre.

They were able to remove about 96%.

She did very well postoperatively and she was determined to go home as soon as possible. This was so indicative of my daughter — a determined fighter.

On day #1 post-op she was discharged home, cleared by physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

At home, she rested and wore compression stockings to prevent blood clots from developing.

Bruising spread down her face, as did the swelling, to the point her eyes were almost swollen shut.

The biopsy results came back, and it indeed was an Oligodendroglioma. A rare brain tumour. Only 3% of all brain tumours are this type.

It is an incurable disease.

I joined a Facebook group especially for people with this type of cancer so that I could learn more.

I learned how to pronounce it: aa·luh·gow·den·drow·glai·ow·muh. I needed to speak the name of what was now a part of my daughter.

In January of 2021, she began radiation and chemo. She was only able to withstand six months, instead of the recommended full year of chemo, as her blood counts became too low.

Later this month, on June 25th, it will be two years since her surgery.

It has been a long slow healing process. A life-changing diagnosis. A revelation of how we are much stronger than we think.

A reminder that we only have this moment in life.

And that there are some things we can change, and other things we cannot change.

So we live with what we have and are grateful for each day.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life. She likes to take walks, read, watch TV dramas, practice Qi-gong, and work on her memoir series BARBARA By The BAY.