A Cloak of Peace.
“You’re lucky, you don’t have to have a lumbar puncture
because you have a mass in your head” declared Dr. E. and turned briskly around
and left the room. First of all, you said I had a …what? A mass in my head? You mean like a brain tumor?
That is how Sunday night, September 14 of last year went for
me as I tried to grasp what I had been told. As a nurse, I always wondered how
people felt when they were told something like this. Well, I found out very
personally. I think I truly understand what shock feels like. That one little
statement by the emergency doctor made my life come to a screeching halt. At
that point, I didn’t even have questions, I was just trying to get through the
next few minutes. I remember shaking my
head because it just simply couldn’t be real and all night long in a private
room in Chilliwack General Emergency, I gasped for breath as I tried to sort
everything out in my mind. That night I
had been told that someone should stay with me because it would not be good for
me to be alone. The nurses were all crying. I kept wondering why they were so
sad – I hadn’t even absorbed what was actually going on and they were giving me
the impression that things were very serious. One nurse said over and over,
“this is such a sad story.” I sent
Robert home with Katie because I couldn’t
stand the thought of her going home alone. I told Robert to go be with her,
that I would be fine and knew I could call him if I needed him. You see, Katie and I are best friends, we do
so much together, she’s a priceless girl and she and I were both thinking the
worst. People can tell you not to worry
until you have reason to but, even
though I knew that was true in my head, my head and heart were having a very
hard time connecting that night.
I was whirling because I had just come to emergency because Robert and I were supposed to leave the next day for a week at Loon Lake and I had a bit of a fever and headache. Because I'm on medications that compromise my immune system, I am supposed to get on antibiotics as soon as I detect even a slight fever and typically when I show up in emerg for that, the doctors would ask me which antibiotic I was due for because we had been alternating antibiotics and the ER docs were just checking it out. Instead I found myself being hooked up to heart monitor, being in one of the "acute" beds in ER, and having Dr. E. say to me that she didn't feel comfortable just giving me an antibiotic because she had never seen me before so she was going to thoroughly check everything out and then would decide. I have to admit, at first I was a little irritated with her. I thought she was wasting tax payers money but decided that I would just go through all these tests to humor her. So they did blood work and blood gases. Several components were very out of whack in my bloodwork so Dr. E. decided that the next step would be to do a lumbar puncture but, anytime before doing an LP, it is protocol to do a CT scan of the head to make sure that there aren't any masses because it can be deadly to do a LP when there's a mass in the head. So, I obligingly went for the CT Scan. When I was finished, the technician said, "you must be having a lot of headaches." to which I promptly replied that I was not having headaches anymore than usual. It was as soon as I was back in my bed in ER, that the doctor came and told me that I didn't have to have the LP. I was immediately outraged that she would drop a bomb like that and just walk away, not telling me how big this 'mass' was, where it was or anything. But, since then, I have been SO thankful that she took the approach she did! I felt God's providential care in such a huge way that it almost made me shudder. I thought over and over about how God orchestrates even little details in our lives. I stand in awe of the fact that He does and how He does. Amazing!
Getting back to that unforgettable night, I remember texting Becky to tell her this news. Robert and I were supposed to go
there for our weekly Sunday night visit but we had called it off because I
wasn’t feeling well. I just needed someone to
know and someone to be praying for me throughout the night because all I could get
out were gasps and sighs. Robert also tried to contact both boys but they had already turned their phones off for the night so they didn't get these messages until the next day.
In my head I knew God was in control of all things and
that He never makes any mistakes so this, as scary as it was, was also in His
Holy hands and He would never leave me or forsake me. I took all the comfort I
could from that and felt a little niggle of peace because of knowing that about
God who never changes. In bits and starts I was able to cling to Him throughout
that night and I definitely knew that this was a time in the popular Footprints
poem, that I was certainly being carried. Little did I know that in the weeks
ahead, I would cling to God through very rough moments, but more about that in another post.
The next morning I was whisked off for test after test as I
waited for the ambulance to take me to Royal Columbian Hospital. When I was admitted to the neuro ward at RCH,
I think 4 nurses were admitting me, all asking questions at the same time. And
my headache got worse and worse. At this point I couldn’t handle lights or
noise so with a towel over my face, I answered the rest of their questions.
Finally at about 7pm, the neurosurgeon came to see us. He
was able to make me relax a bit when he told us that the tumor was big but it
was encapsulated, that it did not have tentacles, and that is was very likely
benign because it had actually shifted my skull and, apparently if it
would be cancerous, it does not move the skull because it infiltrates the
bone. He told us that, if you have to
have a brain tumor, this is the type you want to have. However, he also
cautioned that the surgery would be extremely dangerous because of how close it
was to my brainstem, which controls all vital functions. At this point the
tumor was approximately 4 cm in diameter.
Dr N. decided that he would wait one week until doing
surgery so that the medications he put me on would shrink everything around the
tumor, making it easier to get and reduce the risk of complications. During
that week, I became sicker and sicker and my headache grew worse and then
unbearable. I was told I was at a huge
risk for seizures.
While this was certainly a big thing to deal with, I must
say that I had the most wonderful staff on the neuro ward. The nurses, the
doctors, the porters, the imaging staff, and the cleaning staff were all
amazing!
During that week of waiting for the surgery, Jeremy and
Bailey flew home from Toronto so that they could be with us too. I was so
thankful that they were here. Even though the situation was very difficult, we
had precious memories through that time as well and had some pretty nice talks.
The one that stands out for me is when I had to broach the subject of my survival
of the surgery. I was told it was quite
a dangerous procedure and I knew that I might not survive so we had to talk
about that. Through lots of tears we had this discussion, which was anything
but easy. I will never forget Robert’s comment. He said that if I didn’t make
it through the surgery, he would not be able to breathe without me. He is such
a darling and we are so close, this broke my heart but I remained calmly
assured that no matter what, God had me.
In the next post I will focus on the day of surgery...
In the next post I will focus on the day of surgery...
