My Virtual Memoir - My Dad's Brain Tumor

Summer Galitz June 2, 2009

My Virtual Memoir was driven by my driving question: In what aspects does one significant event change someone's life forever? I’m going to narrate about my father’s brain tumor and how it has changed my life:

Day 1:
I’m feeling a little nervous because I have a feeling that something isn’t right. My dad is acting slightly depressed and I could feel tension in the air between my family and me. During dinner, my dad gets a phone call and leaves the room to talk in private; something he’s never done before. When he returns my mother and father are whispering. I sense something is wrong.

Day 7:
I slept over a friend’s house and my mom calls me to come home, she wants to have a family day. I get home and my mom tells me and my two sisters to come sit down on my bed with her. She tells me my father has a brain tumor and she begins to cry. They just found out a week ago, and he is scheduled to have an operation the next week. I don’t even know what to say or think, or how to react. I just feel tears streaming down my face. My life has changed forever.

Day 14:
It’s the night before my father’s operation and I’m sitting in his hospital room eating Pollo Tropical. My Uncles and Aunts are there, and the Rabbi from my synagogue is there as well. I can’t stand sitting in that room and watching my dad lying in the hospital bed is torture for me. I have to leave the room and I cry in the hallway. The next thing I know is that I’m home in bed trying to fall asleep; but it’s so hard to sleep when you know that tomorrow is the day they operate on your father’s brain.

Day 15:
I don’t go to school and I spend the day at the hospital waiting for my dad to get out of surgery. Many hours have passed and we finally hear some good news. The surgery is complete and they take my dad to Intensive Care Unit. I can’t see him until later that night, but when I enter the ICU I freeze in panic. The room, full of hospital beds and nurses and surgeons, is a room no patient wants to be submitted to; for it is a room only for those patients who need the most intensive care. I see my father, and he is almost unrecognizable to me. He has a weird coloring to his face, and his eyes look vacant. He tries to talk but mumbles words together. He doesn’t really recognize me. I just hold his hand, and I wait for things to get better.

Day 17:
My father is still in ICU and his health is improving. He cries all the time because the tumor was in the part of his brain that when operated on causes heavy emotions. It is common for a patient with a brain tumor to be very emotional, and cry at almost everything. Seeing my father cry makes me cry. Dr. Sternau, the doctor who operated on my father visits my father. She tells him and the family that the tumor she removed was the size of a plum (they originally thought that the tumor was the size of a walnut…). Dr. Sternau marvels at how my father was able to live for so long without having a seizure or losing consciousness with a brain tumor that large. She also tells us that she isn’t one hundred percent sure if the tumor was cancerous or non-cancerous. The tumor was taken to pathology and we would find out soon whether or not it was cancerous. We all had our fingers crossed.

Day 18:
Dr. Sternau finally announces that the tumor was non-cancerous. My dad cries, I cry, my sisters cry. I couldn’t be happier. My father still has trouble talking and his memory is very shaky. He needs a lot of rehab in order to get back to his normal self. I don’t even care, I’m just happy my father is tumor and cancer-free J

Day 19:
My sisters and I are on the way to the hospital to visit my dad after school and my mom calls to tell us to not go to ICU but to meet my mom downstairs at the Mount Sinai lobby. I instantly know something is wrong. We meet my mom in the lobby, and while crying she tells us that my dad had a buildup of fluid to his brain, which isn’t too uncommon after brain surgery, and he is in surgery again to have a shunt installed to drain the fluid. Hours pass and my dad is out of surgery and placed back into the dreadful ICU.

Day 25:
My dad is still in the hospital and I have become very familiar with the cafeteria and the whole third floor. I eat chocolate Haagen Daz ice cream from the cafeteria and a Vitamin Water almost every day when I visit my dad after school. He has now been removed from ICU and put into a regular room with a nice view of the bay. His room is filled with flowers and cards and pictures, and we are all happy.

Day 28:
My dad is transferred to Miami Heart Hospital for Rehabilitation. There he learns to walk again and move his arms up and down. It’s a long and frustrating process but he improves every day. Today I get to the hospital and as I walk in my dad is having an ultra-sound on his left leg. I ask why he is having an ultra-sound and the doctor explains that he has a blood clot because he has been lying down for so many days on end. He was then put on blood thinners temporarily in order to remove the clot.

Day 42:
My dad finally gets to come home! Since he can’t walk up the stairs to get to his bedroom he rests in my bedroom which is downstairs. That night many family members and friends come over to bring dinner. Their support is tremendous and it has really helped us get through this terrible event. Things are going well until my dad begins to cough. And this wasn’t just some ordinary cough. It was a loud, terrible cough that could be heard throughout my whole house. My mom, being a nurse, knew something was wrong.

Day 43:
It’s 7:00 a.m. and my parents aren’t home. My mom left a note saying that she left in the middle of the night with my father to the hospital. Apparently the blood thinners didn’t help and the blood clot was dislodged and went to his lung. This is a pulmonary embolism and it’s very dangerous. My dad had surgery, yes another surgery, to put permanent, almost microscopic, filters into his lung. This filtered the blood clot.

Day 49:
My dad finally comes home and we all pray that it is for good this time. His health is improving, and he is slowly becoming his normal-self again. Since he is a surgeon, he can’t go back to work anytime soon because he has to be one hundred percent recovered in order to practice medicine again. This is tough financially on my family, and I start to worry about money.

Day 60:
My dad is still not at work because he isn’t fully recovered. The medical expenses were tremendous and it doesn’t help that my family isn’t getting any income. Times are tough, but at least my dad is healthy!

Day 90:
Visits to the doctor have proved that the filter that was put into my dad’s lung was faulty. An incompetent doctor broke the filter while he placed it in, and carelessly left it in there. A piece of the broken filter was dislodged and floating around in my dad’s vein. It is seriously dangerous. Just when we think that hospital visits, surgery, and illness is over, another problem pops up once again.

Day 97:
My dad is scheduled to have surgery to remove the faulty filter and replace it with a new one. It is a dangerous surgery and it has only been performed a few times before. They will do the surgery laparscopically (they won’t make any incisions; they just enter through a vein and use a very, very tiny camera to guide them to the broken filter). I’m in a really bad mood that day at school, and I’m nervous the whole day. My grandparents pick me up from school and we visit my dad. When we get there he has just gotten out of surgery and he once again is placed in the cardiovascular ICU. When I visit him he is awake and lively, and he looks very happy. The cardiovascular surgeon comes to explain that the surgery was difficult and long, and it was a very rare surgical case. However, his healthy and should recover one hundred percent.

Day 100:
My dad comes home, this time for good! Things seem to be improving, and it looks like my dad will be back at work in a month.

Day 130:
My dad is back at work but he is only doing small procedures. He isn’t doing any intense or long surgeries yet, because he wants to regain his confidence in the operating room. Also, he doesn’t have as much stamina as before, but with practice and time he will regain his endurance. I’m finally at comfort and relaxation.

It’s only been a month or two that I’ve felt like my life is back on track. This one significant event, my dad’s brain tumor, changed my life forever. It taught me new morals and it gave me a new outlook on life. I now appreciate life more, and I have more sympathy for other families who have gone through similar traumas. I am a stronger person because I have experienced this. I have learned about myself, and my family, and even my friends. My good friends shone through and stood by my side when I needed them, and this helped me discover who my true friends really were. I also matured throughout this experience, because there were many nights when I had to cook dinner for myself and be the adult because my mom would spend the night at my hospital. One time, my mom spent the entire week at the hospital without coming home. My family life was in disarray. I also learned how to maintain my good grades at school while dealing with this hardship. Often it was hard to concentrate in class because I would think about my dad’s health, and sometimes it was hard to get homework done because I spent so much time after school at the hospital. To this day, driving by Mount Sinai Hospital, gives me a nauseous feeling.
I would have days where I would be grumpy and in a bad mood because my dad being sick made me feel down. Some friends would get mad at me and tell me to stop being upset, while others would understand. My relationship with my grandparents strengthened because they visited much more and they helped my mom take care of me and my sisters. I couldn’t be happier now, and thank goodness this terrible experience ended with a great result.