This was an exhilarating but phenomenal week! Weather changed and I had a terrible headache, one that made me barely sleep on Sunday. I have never been the type that complains about headaches, for me to complain about pain it needs to be hair pulling and this was the case. To make things worse Brazilian basketball star Oscar Schmidt, who was diagnosed with a grade 3 oligoastrocytoma two months before me, was all over the news last month as his glioma recurred. It made me wonder if this was my time too and I've never been so anxious before an MRI.
I had my MRI on Monday at 10PM and as always I slept inside the machine. For whatever reason MRI machines have the same effect that TV has on me, it makes me sleep.
As I was dreaming inside the machine the MRI was interrupted and I was waken up to answer a few questions. As I was pulled out of the MRI machine I found myself surrounded by a huge crew of doctors, nurses and administrators. The first thing that came to my mind was "this is it, the damn thing is back!".
First question from the crew was "can you hear us?" as I had ear plugs on. "Yes" I replied and as I stared at them waiting for the freaking question I get a "your MRI was wrong, you need a perfusion and our administrator did not notice it, your insurance does not cover it and you need to pay for it, is that OK?".
Talk about the best way to get bad news, everything is relative and getting a $1,000+ bill instead of a positive recurrence was great. I never thought money would mean so little but it did, my MRI has remained unchanged since my December MRI with perfusion and therefore my tumor did not grow!
As I move on with life I have to confess that my long gone fear of dying came back last week but I am happy to say that it is gone again, I can focus again on life and live in the present, the only tense we should live by. I just read an article about Henry Molaison, a man who at 27 was operated and had his hypocampus and amigdala removed, only to wake-up without the ability to memorize anything for more that 20 seconds. For not having a long-term memory Henry never kept a grudge or resentment. American neurologist Suzanne Corkin wrote a book called Permanent Present Tense about it, of course this will go on my list and as soon as I finish my Study of History I will dive into it, nothing like learning from those that left us precious lessons from the past to apply in the present.
Living in the present is great and is the only certainty we have, not to get too philosophical yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future and today is a gift, that is why it is called the present.
