Читать книгу Fierce Joy - Susie Caldwell Rinehart - Страница 17

6

“First, you’ll lose your voice. Then your ability to breathe,” says Dr. Levin, lifting his glasses to the top of his head to look at me and Kurt directly. He says these words in the same matter-of-fact tone that a waiter might say, “First your salad will arrive. Then you’ll get your steak.” He takes a plastic model of a skull down from a shelf in the cramped examination room and points at its waxy yellow bones and purple plastic arteries, giving a lecture on the brainstem’s function. I recognize that it is a human skull, but I have no idea what he is saying. My mind drifts to my heart. Is it beating? Then to my lungs. Can I still take a breath?

How did I get here? Two weeks after running the ultramarathon, I wake up with a bad headache. I am not surprised. I am used to this throbbing discomfort, and I was also up late with girlfriends, drinking wine. But this feels sharper than the dull fogginess of a hangover. And it’s accompanied by an electric pain radiating down my right arm. I have not felt this before. I manage to drive the kids to their summer day camps. On the way home, while stopped at a traffic light, I suddenly feel nauseated. I open the car door and throw up on the white line in the middle of the road. Something is not right, but I have no idea what is wrong. I wipe my mouth, drive home, and call my friend Sarah. She offers to take me to the doctor. Dr. Pedersen orders a new round of MRIs of my head and neck, and that’s how I end up in this neurosurgeon’s office.

“We can’t know what kind of tumor this is for sure until we get a piece of it, but it’s rare and aggressive. It has wrapped itself like a boa constrictor around your brainstem. The brainstem controls your heart, your lungs, everything you need to survive,” says Dr. Levin.