September 5
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Angelo has a brain tumor.   I've known for two days, and it's taken me two days to be able to type those words without crying.  If you can imagine the phone conversation between Eleanor and I, when she told me and I felt myself going cold and the world kind of did this weird swirl and I thought to myself, as I listened to her talk, "Wow, people DO go cold when they get bad news".  She sounded terrible.  So did Angelo.  I went through the next hour or so in a daze.  A brain tumor.  I mean, of all of the things you expect to hear, or the things I expected to hear--Alzehimer's disease.  Senile Dementia.  A brain tumor.

Yesterday, after a tearful morning (and not to whine, but I have kind of a bad cold, too), Eleanor called to tell me that they'd gotten an appointment with a neurosurgeon that afternoon at 4, and could I go over to the hospital to pick up copies of his MRI. I go and get the films, and meet them over at the office. It is a neurosurgeon neither I, nor any of the doctors who surround me, seem to know.  I am a little nervous that he will be cold and impersonal and that Angelo will not like him, but my worries are unfounded.  He is young and outgoing and handsome.  He speaks loudly and clearly.  He is patient and listens to Angelo's story (In response to the doctor's "So, what do you do with yourself?", Angelo answered "Well, I worked for the United States Government for 22 years! And I served in the Navy! One Sunday in 1947, I fell off a ladder in the Phillipines! Ever heard of the Brooklyn Navy Yard??"), and in the end, he tells us all that Angelo needs brain surgery.

Angelo has an egg sized tumor (a meningioma, or so they say) behind his left eye.  It's likely been there for 20 years--they are slow growing.  In the past 2 years or so, it started to grow more agressively, and the new growth began pushing on his brain.  Space which contained brain now contains tumor, and the brain is swelling in protest.  The swelling is causing memory loss, forgetfulness and small seizures (not the seizures you'd think of:  his seizures are him simply disconnecting.  He will be in the middle of a sentence [or so my grandmother tells me, I've never seen him do it] and he will just go blank for 10 seconds).  We are told that this will get worse and worse if he leaves the tumor untreated, and that there is an opening Monday morning at 7:30.  Angelo freaks, understandably.  In the end, after a lot of talk (The Doctor:  "Well, then, I'll just leave you all for a second."  Me: "We'll fight about this in the meantime."  Him:  "Good call.  Be right back.") Angelo decides to go through with it, but he is scared shitless, as am I, as is Eleanor and my mom.

So, on his 82nd birthday, at 7:30 am, my grandfather is having brain surgery.  Brain surgery!

Swing some good thoughts our way, I suspect we will need them.
 
 

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