Introduction

I have been through a long, frustrating journey throughout the 27 years I've been married. The culprit of this frustration is my husband's brain tumor, discovered after he fell on July 6, 2008. He had a very large, benign meningioma, which was removed on July 9, 2008. I often wonder if my entire marriage has been affected by this tumor, as I suspect it was slowly growing all this time. I can go back to 1989 as being the first time I was confounded and confused by actions that did not mesh at all with Rich's personality. At the time, we had two small children, ages 2 and 1. While working at my part-time job as a pharmacy technician at Rite-Aid I was asked by the pharmacist to deliver medications to another store. It was a gorgeous October Saturday...not a cloud in the sky...crisp & clear. I was happy to get out of the pharmacy. I was about halfway to my destination when I was hit head-on. Just like that my life changed. I was in excruciating pain. The pain medication they gave me wasn't helping at all. My husband, who was usually very helpful & kind refused to help me. We lived in a two level townhouse where the bedrooms were up 14 stairs. I had a very difficult time getting up & downstairs and getting my 1 year old son in and out of his crib was torture. I had to crawl up & down. After a couple of days my husband said he was going to stay at his parents house 35 minutes away because he couldn't take my crying all the time. I was dumbfounded! He left for a whole week! This was the first I noticed this mean, self-centered side to Rich. Over & over through the years and with two more children, an indifference & coldness would frequently invade our home. It never made any sense to me. Around 2005, changes in Rich's behavior and personality were becoming more frequent. By the summer of 2007 I had basically had it with him. I kept telling myself & everyone that it was all due to stress at his job. But beside his personality, he looked different and I was worried that something was seriously wrong with his health. I kept after him to go to the doctor. Over the 6 months preceding his fall, Rich would space out and not remember anything -- I thought he was just tuning me out. I didn't know that these incidents were actually seizures. Finally he made an appointment for a physical. Ironically, he was scheduled for blood work the day after he fell. Who knows if a doctor would have discovered the brain tumor during a physical examination. Life has been very difficult since then, for all of us. In future blogs I will give you my experiences with our lives after brain tumor excision --2008 until now and then future experiences. I'm sure many people will be able to relate and I hope to gain some new friends who understand life before, during, and after a brain tumor. People think that just because the tumor wasn't cancerous that it makes it less serious. But they are wrong. Good night.