The Highs and Lows of Life

This month I’ll be 69, the end of another decade. Stan is already 70. It’s funny how our definition of old age changes. When anyone dies within 15 years of our current age, we say, “Wow, they were young!” There is something inside of us that always feels ageless. What is that? 

Never mind that I had to hold onto Stan and Jason-the-Jeep-Driver for dear life to maneuver myself to this rocky peak at Imogene Pass, just outside Telluride, Colorado. Balance has been a problem for me since 2009 when, at the age of 54, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a meningioma, not cancer, thankfully. But I could not help but think about my own mother, Sandra Wright, who died of cancer at the age of 54. It had metastasized to her brain when they discovered it, so we called it a brain tumor. It was hard not to draw the connection, though this was a very different thing. 

My tumor image looked like a tennis ball suspended in the middle of my head. Doctors said it had probably grown slowly over some 10 years. The hardest part was that my surgery wasn’t scheduled until August, three months after the diagnosis. It wasn’t immediately life-threatening so others with more urgent needs went before me. 

That gave me some 90 days in hours, minutes, and seconds to pre-worry – about every outcome I could imagine. Will I be able to do all this important thinking in the future? Will I be able to speak, walk, remember, read? There is no such thing as minor brain surgery, right?

I thought back to my radio days in the ’70s and the first time I was about to read the news live on the air. I was breaking out in hives, literally. An old radio veteran stuck his head in the door and said, “Relax, it’s not brain surgery.” 

I thought about the 1980s while working with Dr. Red Duke as producer and scriptwriter for the UT Medical School Health Reports that aired on Channel 13. He was reluctant to do a report about the brain. Dr. Duke said, “It’s interesting, but what the heck is it?” He said that the brain can comprehend the whole body better than it can understand itself. It reminded me of the Shakespeare line (paraphrased): “The eye cannot see itself.”

No one could tell me the reason for the tumor. I wondered what I had done to cause it. I’ve always been an over-thinker. I could exhaust myself thinking and never leave the sofa. I’ve heard it called Monkey Mind, when thoughts jump around prompted by anxiety and indecision in a completely dysfunctional state. Maybe I thought my way into this. (This is not official medical information, obviously). None of the scenarios I pre-imagined happened. And even if they had, would pre-worrying have done any good?

I woke up after a 10-hour surgery, looking like Benjamin Franklin, with the top of my head shaved into male pattern baldness with dirty blond hair stringing below. My neurosurgeon, Dr. David Baskin, and an entourage of the residents who had attended the surgery came by on their morning rounds. I knew that paralysis on my left side was a risk. So, as a dozen or so white coats looked in on me, I raised my left leg and they all applauded. I pointed to my head saying, “This is the last time I’m coming here for a haircut.” They laughed. My ego loved it. Walking would take more time. 

The following day, it took two nurses and a walker to get me into the shower, a little like the feeling of climbing that rocky mound last summer at Imogene Pass. During the 10-hour surgery, my father, Clymer Wright, his wife Katherine, and my husband at the time, George Flynn, all sat anxiously, along with my oldest daughter, Laura Gabriel. I moved through recovery with their help and support. Then in the coming years, it would be my job to lay the older three to rest one by one – Katherine in 2010, my father, 2011, and George in 2013. Six years would go by before meeting my current husband, Stan-the-Man. 

I’ve always thought it was kind of shallow to only be thankful for the so-called good things that happen. That’s just a set-up for a lot of pre-worrying about what might be coming next. It’s no way to live. I prefer the 13th century advice from Rumi, the Persian poet: “Live as if everything is rigged in your favor.” 

By the way, I think the part of us that always feels ageless is the truest part of who we are, the part that never dies. (Again, this is not official medical advice.)