When I came out of anesthesia, I saw my children by my bed. It’s the first time we’ve all been together in years. In that moment I knew, perhaps for the first time, how deeply I was loved. If a fatal brain tumor was what I had to pay for that, I considered it a fair bargain.
Old wounds have hardly healed, of course, and there are any number of ways this gathering could go south. And yet, something profound happened. The presence of my family told me that we are in this together. I expect we will continue through difficult months and years ahead.
The biggest challenge was the work I had to do on my own. Treatment — chemotherapy, radiation and steroids — brought out the worst in me at first. Keppra, an anti-seizure drug, is known to produce aggressive anger. Leila received that.
Before I left the hospital, we sought the advice of a neuropsychologist, who helped us adjust to the emotional lability that a brain tumor can cause. Together, we will get through this, we decided, and we did. With the help of Meigs Ross, a gifted couples therapist experienced in working with brain injury, we found ways to adjust. “There are now three of you in this relationship,” he told us, “Rod, Leila and GBM”
One night, Leila came out of the room after hearing a crash. I drank a bottle of wine and it fell out of my left hand, which had been paralyzed since the surgery. When I was a working journalist, alcohol was almost a tool of the trade. But now, it is even more dangerous. Around the anniversary of my diagnosis, I sought treatment for alcohol abuse, and with the help of a counselor, spoke for the first time about my father’s cruelty. Over the year we worked together, I understood why I used alcohol to anesthetize myself. At the end of it, I realized that I was free, at last, from the shame that my father had bequeathed to me.