By mid-September, I could carefully maneuver most places with a cane, albeit a bit tipsy on occasion.  My legs still fought me over stairs, but I showed them who was boss with some fancy cane and rail-holding techniques.  My mouth worked somewhat with what now could be mistaken for some sort of slow drawl (neither Southern nor charming, I should add).  One of my lovely neighbors showed me how to hide my shining baldness with a bit of wiggery and creative scarf tying.  When she finished with me, I looked like a Gypsy preparing to read the future.

I was ready!

I was more than ready to get back to my office with its fast-paced challenges.  I could walk.  I could talk.  Certainly, I could manage sitting at a desk.  I could do it.

But here’s what I couldn’t do:

• Count on a static, boring life from now on.
• Fix my eyes on any one star and claim it as my true north.
• Know all those future dimes on which my life could turn.

Every morning — when my eyes opened once again — I managed to locate the day’s pure possibility.  Maybe I no longer jumped out of bed, but rather carefully positioned my legs, gently talking to them before asking them to stand and carry their load.  Maybe I was more thoughtful before allowing my mouth to embarrass itself.

Maybe through the removal of 6.5 centimeters of brain tumor, I gained a 6.5 centimeter hole ready to be back-filled with whatever might become of this shiny new normal.  There were new paths to walk, gentle words to let fall like petals along those paths.  My goodness, I needed to occupy myself with the business of growing back a few wisps of stalwart hair.

Since July 6, 1994, everything that has issued forth has come from a dark roundness, slightly larger than a golf ball, deep in the bottom of my brain.  Every step.  Every word.  Every action and every precedent thought.  When I was still in the hospital, a friend said to me that I seemed a different person.  I would agree.  I am a different person; I’m now imbued with a certain knowledge that making something good out of something really bad isn’t a choice — it’s a necessity.

Understand, I never expected to have a brain tumor.  I never thought I’d fall through that Wonderland of rabbit holes and nonsensical outcomes to end up fifteen years later still here.  Five years ago, I was honored to serve on a Survivors’ Panel at the National Brain Tumor Association’s annual meeting.  I attended one particular session given by a well-known doctor in the field of neurology.  After mentioning that the average time between diagnosis and death for a brain tumor patient is eighteen months, he was asked by a shaken and frightened woman how he handled telling people they were going to die.

“I never tell anyone they’re going to die,” he said, pointing to me.  “I always figure you’ll be the survivor, the one who will well outlast us all … and I treat you as such.  Yes, the statistics sound grim, but every patient who walks into my office is my latest survivor.”

Now and then, I hear a miserly little voice that wants to convince me to feel bad because I was one who beat the odds.  Survivor’s guilt, it’s called, and it’s a ridiculous waste of emotion.  In my case, every lemon was squeezed into lemonade, but not necessarily by my own hand.  My tumor was found.  It was operable.  I was fortunate to have a brilliant surgeon whose hands were not satisfied until every remnant of tumor was removed.  I was lucky to be a paycheck-to-paycheck working girl just wanting to keep a roof over my head.  Being not of means propelled me to get out of bed and work, work, work so I could get back to work, work, work.  I had family, neighbors and friends who were selfless enough to look after me during those early days.  I had colleagues who were generous enough to give me the time and money needed to get — literally — back on my feet.

Finally, I had a good stubborn Irish heritage that taught me to see beyond what could certainly be considered a blighted heap of disappointment and rather, keep digging for the “good potatoes.”  If it was one twitch of a stubborn leg, I held on to it like a nugget of gold.  If it was one intelligible word, one follicle of hair, one moment aside from the crushing fear that surrounds the word, “tumor,” I took it.  I took every small thing I could.

The cumulative effect of any good moments, however small, eventually outnumbered the bad days.  I was different, for certain, but that “shiny new normal” hasn’t been so bad at all.  Here’s what it’s like for me now, fifteen years later:

1. I no longer need wheels or sticks to get around.  Instead, I have a grand “fuzzy cane” in the form of a Labradoodle named Wilson.
2. I can converse with the best of ’em now — just ask my beleaguered husband — he’ll tell you so.
3. I almost have some hair … almost.
4. It took five years, but I can now close my eyes and bow my head without spinning out of my seat with dizziness.
5. My imagination and curiosity have led me to a writing life of quiet pleasure.
6. In some ways, I wish I’d had this type of “normal” all along — I could have skipped all those youthful indiscretions and not been like Annie singing It’s a Hard Knock Life at the top of my lungs.
7. But then again, I wouldn’t change a hair on my little hairless head.

I’ll end this narrative now to resume my regularly-scheduled programming of zipping around from one topic to the next.  That’s what my new brain does.  It zips!

I’ll leave with this, however.  Last evening, I attended a dinner to help raise money for a young single mom whose six year-old daughter is nearing her last days because of a brain tumor.  Six years old!  I have no good words for the brutality of that situation.  I only know that some of us survive; some do not.  And that shiny new normals sometimes seem neither shiny nor welcome, but rather, cruel and incomprehensible.

There is no sense to be made of tragic illness — either yours or that of someone else.  I hold no answers.  I don’t even know the questions.  I only have an experience to tell and, with that, if anyone gained even a small hope from these twelve short posts, then yay!  Hold on.  Sometimes that Donna Summers I’m Gonna Live Forever song contains the only sense to be made of it all.  I’m gonna learn how to fly, the song lyrics say.

So here’s a last thought:  Do your best to learn to fly.  If your wings break, fly in your thoughts.  If your brain breaks, fly in your heart.  If your heart fails, as eventually they all do, then let’s all meet up in that grand Somewhere Else where we can cheer each other on and EVERYONE can display their brand spanking, sparkling … Shiny New Normal.

Stay well, everyone.

–Auburn McCanta

I spent all of August and part of September helping my one Amazing, Fabulous, Glorious Over-Achieving Brain Cell recruit others in kind of an Amway-esque pyramid scheme.  You get five friends and they get five friends and down the line, we’ll all be grandly rewarded.  Every day I bumped my way down the stairs and into the swimming pool for the Auburn Pool Wall Clutching Method of water aerobics.  At this point, I should mention that I absolutely HATE cold pool water.  Even in August with triple digit temperatures the norm more than the exception, that water felt like ice cubes down my neck.  But through gritted teeth, each day my legs found more confidence.  By mid-August, they were taking steps without my having to tap them first.  I still recited “left leg, right leg” in my head, but on a good day I didn’t have to tap at all and occasionally I’d even screw up the courage to let go of the side.

Without telling the doctor, I graduated myself from sitting endless days in a wheelchair.  By the end of August, I got around with a walker and even tempted fate now and then wobbling about in my apartment with a cane.  There was always a wall or piece of furniture on which to steady myself and if I fell … I figured someone would check on me eventually.

Ahh, there’s nothing like a dwindling bank account to propel one’s legs (and brain cells) toward excellence.

I worked on my mouth too.  In the delightful cool of those evening summer Sacramento Delta breezes, I sat on my small apartment patio and read books aloud.  I started out with the heavy slur of one who might have suffered a tragic stroke.  My tongue and lips were on permanent slow-as-you-go and the task was to speed my speech enough that others could understand me.  For example, a quick Hi sounded more like, Hiiiiiiaaaaahhh.  It felt like enunciating in a vat of mud.  But once again, I wondered if there was one Bright, Amazing, Over-Achieving Word-Loving brain cell willing to wake up its sleeping neighbors.

Yes, all through August and half of September — every day — I walked in water.  I read through mud.

My hair jumped into the game and valiantly tried to resume its rightful place on my head.  Sadly, the score was Head – 1, Hair – 0.

Nevertheless, I was a pool-walking, mouth-moving whirl of baldness under a baseball cap.  And as my father might have said … Life, she was Good!!!

Thank you for your patience during this uncharacteristically long intermission.  We now resume our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

The day following my free-wheeling, jibberish-hollering, whooptie-do through the winding corridors of my apartment complex, my helper decided that I was a handful too large for her small hands.  With her lips pursed into what looked like the top of a drawstring bag, she backed out of my door without explanation.  None was necessary.  She’d signed on to take care of me before she found out that I would wake up one day with such enthusiasm that I couldn’t help but make her an unwilling participant in my vociferous, unintelligible shout-out to anyone within range.  My behavior had been neither demure, nor proper and I couldn’t blame her for abandoning her post.  She’d been hired to cook, feed, clean, wipe, tiptoe and silently read.  She had no idea I wanted a party!

So I was helper-less.  But I wasn’t helpless.

Word spread quickly that I was now a lone wolf in need of a pack.  The apartment ladies organized a meal briggade and the guys were handy in helping me out of bed and into my chair.  Now instead of one helper, I had more help than I knew what to do with.  After just a couple days of all that neighborly hovering, I sent everyone away with huge thanks and a brave grin.

I had a refrigerator filled with fabulous home-cooked meals and I was able to scooch myself in and out of my wheelchair easily.  (Remember, I wasn’t paralized … just disconnected between brain and legs.)  I was able to stand, sit and scoot myself around fairly well.  Little niblets of hair had begun to give my head a good five-o’clock shadow.

I.  Was.  Awake.

It was August now and the pool below my balcony was busy with swimmers and lined up with swim-suited sun lizards all greased up and nicely frying on their lounge chairs.  Sacramento is a heat-lovers’ delight in the summer with its triple digit days and balmy breeze-filled evenings.  The pool below was a blue magnet.  It called to me.

Auburn.  Aaauuubbuuuuurrnnn.

When I could no longer stand hearing the siren call of that beautiful blue pool, a wild thought flashed through my now tumorless brain.  If I could get into the pool, and hang on to the side … maybe I could convince my legs to move.  Maybe there was one over achieving brain cell that still knew the Macarena and was able to teach its neighbors.  Maybe those legs of mine could dance yet.  The equipment was all there.  I just needed to turn on the electricity.

The stairway to the pool was just two steps from my door.  Literally.  Two steps.  I wheeled myself to the door, opened it and with a deathgrip on the doorframe, I stood.  I was so close to the entry to the pool, I needed nose plugs to keep from inhaling that fresh, cool water.  Holding the doorframe with my right hand, I let my left hand flutter to the side of my leg.  I patted my leg.

“Left leg,” I said aloud.  “Left leg.”

My left leg took a small, halting step.  Damn!  Hooray for one good brain cell, I thought.

I was now halfway to the top of the stair railing.  Just one step to go.  Precariously reaching my left hand toward the top of the railing, I bravely let go of my grasp on the doorframe.  If this didn’t work, I was about to do a serious taa daa trick down a long flight of very hard cement stairs.

“Right leg,” I quivered, tapping the leg with my right hand.

My right leg took enough of a step that my left hand was then close enough to grab hold of the stair railing.

I did it!  IdiditIdiditIdidit!!!

Except now I was at the top of a flight of stairs.  I could just as well have been on the moon.  There was no way I could “left leg, right leg,” tap myself down that stairwell.  So, I did the only reasonable thing for a bald-headed, jibberish-speaking, rubber-legged woman.  I sat down on the top stair.  Then I butt-scooched my way down those hot cement stairs, across a ten-foot expanse of only slightly less- hot cool deck and all the way ino the shallow end of the pool.  That glorious, butt-cooling, leg-encouraging blue expanse of pool.

With one hand on the side and a grand look of relief on my face, I took one big water step to the cheers of an incredulous audience and the crowing delight of my one Amazing, Fabulous, Glorious Over-Achieving Brain Cell.

For three weeks I slept.  Except for a few now-and-then spoonfuls of soup or jell-o, I slept — sometimes quietly, sometimes with the small sounds of one in discomfort falling over the bridge of my lips.  Prescription pain medications gave me horrid bed spins.  My only help was a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol every few hours.

Then on a Wednesday morning, three weeks to the day after my surgery, I woke up.  Not the dreamy half-awake I’d been in, but rather, a vibrant awake that shook me with its awareness.

I.  Was.  AWAKE.

I could hear a bird outside my window.  I could see sunlight without wishing for it to be dark.  With my new post-surgery slurry words and diminished volume, I called for my helper.  “Get me into my wheelchair,” I said.  “I want to go outside.  The garden.  Please.  A bird.”

Twenty minutes later, we emerged into the morning.  My apartment overlooked the pool area with its carefully-maintained flower garden.  With some effort, we bumped my wheelchair down the stairs and out to the garden area.  I looked up.  Toni’s apartment was in the building next to mine, also over the garden.  It was in that garden and across our balconies that we had become friends.

“Toni,” I called from below her balcony.  “Look at me.  I’m awake.  Hey, Toni Baloney.  Look — I’m awake!”

It was Wednesday morning.  Toni was at work, but I called out anyway.

When it was clear that I was getting nowhere yelling up into Toni’s balcony, I switched to a different thought.  “Take me around the complex,” I said.  “I want to take a walk.”

“You’re sure?  It’s hot.”  It was evident from her turned-down mouth that my helper was uncomfortable with my behavior and “hot” was a good excuse to take me back to the relative obscurity of my apartment.

“I’m sure.  Take me around.  Please.”

With a shrug of resignation, my helper wheeled me through the winding corridors of the apartment complex.  There I was — bald with a Frankenstein scar running from ear to ear across the top of my skull.  Although I had feeling in my legs, the connection between brain and leg had been misplaced.  Further, the connection for clear, distinct speech was also missing.  I was a garish little bald woman with a horrid scar being wheeled through an apartment complex, yelling gibberish out to anyone who might be within earshot — a magnificent smile plastered to my face.

I.  Was.  Awake.

The following day, my helper quit.