Michael Finley
A THEOLOGY OF BRAIN TUMORS
Page 18
I like the idea of a venous malformation, and I start manipulating the conversation to settle on that diagnosis. "So you think the idea of a brain tumor is out?" I ask him, with an encouraging smile. I am thinking about Dick's brain tumor, and how much he suffered before dying, and how he left the family in an emotional and financial heap. Brain tumors are a horror of mine, so I try to sweep aside that possibility, for Tim to rule it out right now and never refer to it again, as a favor to me, you know, writer to writer. But he won't do it. "We have no reason to think there's any kind of mass in there," Tim says, not quite looking at me. I don't know what makes me shiver, the use of the euphemism mass instead of tumor, or the way he avoids looking at me when he says it. "But just to make sure, I'm scheduling some tests for you in radiology." I nod, but I have the feeling a baton has somehow been passed, that Tim desperately does not want to tell me I have a brain tumor, and is uncomfortable even broaching the topic without evidence on film. This is one job he wants to palm off on specialists -- people who don't know me, who deal with these things coolly and unsentimentally every day. Friends don’t tell friends they have brain tumors.
So I make appointments at a Saint Paul radiology firm to get an MRI and a CAT scan. Snow and ice are still on the ground as I drive up to the building, and sign in at the front desk. The info sheet said to wear no metal of any kind, no zippers, snaps or pins, or else change into a hospital gown. I am in no hurry to ever wear one of those stupid gowns, so I wear a jogging suit instead. The other people in the waiting room are my first glimpse of people who have something funny going on inside. Some of them are attached to wheelchairs and drip tripods. Their attendants trundle them through the double doors and fill in the forms for them. Some of the people seem perfectly normal, flipping languidly through the magazines. Some have their kids with them. Some of them are kids. Some of the kids are obviously not well. A red bandana covers the bald head of one little girl, who is reading a picture book to her baby brother. Another little boy stares off into space, a beany bag giraffe, or maybe it's a llama, in his lap. It doesn't register with me that I am on the verge of becoming one of the sick ones. I am banking heavily on the venous malformation diagnosis, thinking it is the most sensible, least fatal possibility. My writer-doctor nearly guaranteed it, didn't he? (I don't know that hundreds of people die annually from venous malformations.) Finally a technician escorts me back to the machines. Scanners are essentially computers, and they are the same putty color as friendly computers. Being digital, they are more flexible and smarter than analog imaging tools like X-rays. Instead of