Brain Scans

Fourteen years ago, at age 19, my son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A year after diagnosis, he had his first brain surgery.  Five years later, his second.  In the world of brain tumors, both were considered successful.  After hours each time of tedious “resection” as the neurosurgeons call it, we got our son back, fully in tact.

A miracle to me really.

In the midst of his surgeries, radiation, chemo and recoveries,  he has attended and graduated from college, completed grad school and is now coaching high school basketball, his first love.  He is positive, hopeful and daily provides the true north our family has needed to face and accept his battle.

We are told, but are reluctant to accept, that most brain tumors are not considered curable.  But so far, with careful monitoring, he is beating the odds.

Part of that “careful monitoring” is a brain MRI every three months to look for change in his brain, a recurrence of the tumor. Every ninety days we go, my son and me, to the cancer center. After fifty some times, we have our routine. He goes earlier for his MRI.  I follow an hour or so later and we meet with the doctor.

We sit in a sterile hospital office space, blinds often drawn, a computer reflecting the images of a brain scan. Two screens sit side by side, each holding nine different egg-shaped pictures stacked three to a row like a tic tac toe board. Last time’s scan on the left and the latest on the right.

He sits in a chair and I sit across from him, as we always do.  He yawns, cracks his knuckles.  I attempt small talk. Idle chatter. Anything to distract us from the screen.  I have done this so many times, I have begun to plan ahead of time. Often on the way in the the car, flipping through the radio stations, I am rarely listening.

I am thinking, what should we talk about as we wait?

Today it was the list of items I had noticed he needed in his apartment.  Silly things.  A mop. Kleenex, Windex, a shower curtain liner. This shopping list would be today’s neutral time filler.

I have told my friends these visits are a bit like anticipating the jury’s decision, this month’s verdict. I can never decide what is worse–the waiting or the knowing.

I have become accustomed to the sounds of waiting. The nurses chatter in the hallway. Doors opening and closing. Water running. His chart slipping into the metal holder by the doorway. Cars passing outside. The horns. An occasional siren. The flag slapping against the metal pole that stands at the entrance of the hospital.

It’s all so familiar but never a comfort.

He takes his baseball cap off and scratches his head, back to front and then ear to ear as he often does. The top is bald. They said it would grow back in four to six months after radiation. But it has been over a year now and it has not.  I don’t notice any more.  But I know he does.

I listen for footsteps.  Again, familiar but unwelcome.  We wait for them to stop.  The shadow under the door.  The sound as the doctor lifts the chart from the box.  So many pages.  So many visits.

Always the question of time.

I stare at the screen and wonder if the images are my son’s or the patient before him.  The door opens.  My heart beats faster.  A nurse pokes her head in and says the doctor will be right in.  I look at my son’s face, a mixture of expectancy and relief.

“What about a toilet brush?” I ask.  “Do you have a toilet brush?”

Before he can answer, there is a rustle outside the door.  The knob turns.

“It’s stable,” the doctor says as she enters.   “I just went over it twice with the radiologist.”

I jump up and hug her like a long lost friend, forgetting her white coat, HIPPA laws and hospital decorum.

I know she is happy for us and has come to love my boy.  We are all happy.

We will have a Merry Christmas this year and hope that the New Year brings more moments like this.