Hello. I am back. At least, I’m telling myself that I am back. I am committing, under the binding oath of the internet (my hand firmly placed on a laptop open to reddit’s homepage as I swear this to you) to try to blog again this year. Do you hear that, internet? I AM GOING…
It’s been four long years since my brain surgery, and I’m now so removed from the experience and most of its consequences that I almost need to remind myself that it happened. In the weeks before, when the tumor on my hypothalamus was an unknown variable, my friend Mindy said to me, “Hopefully, one day this…
Exactly three years ago, I had brain surgery for the first and only time. Last week, my friend Chad had his fourth brain surgery. We started writing to one another during that strange, pivotal summer three years ago. I was still groggy from the procedure and ravenous from the steroids I was on. Chad had had…
I got an email the other day from someone who was about to have brain surgery. This, in and of itself, isn’t anything new – since writing about my own surgery, I get a couple of emails a week from people who are in similar (or, as is often the case, far scarier) situations. But…
Things are different now. I feel like I could make a note in the timeline of my life to reflect this. “Here is everything that happened before brain surgery. Here’s everything after.” – I have trouble with this; I’ve never been that good with change. I like things to stay as they are. I become…
-\ Today, a friend of mine is having surgery to remove a brain tumor. We talked about it a little bit last year, not long after my surgery. His doctors were able to confirm right away that his tumor wasn’t cancerous (which is all kinds of YES), but in the last few months, it started…
Sunday was a landmark of sorts, and it passed without me realizing it. That, I suppose, was most significant at all. Sunday was the four-month anniversary of my surgery. At some point, I’d stopped counting the days since my brain surgery, and then the weeks, and now, it seems, the months. Rand had left town…
– I was hoping that brain surgery would teach me a thing or two. That I would wake up from my operation with some sort of hidden knowledge that’s only accessible to those who’ve had their skulls cracked open. It’s not that I thought I’d wake up speaking French or anything (though I wouldn’t have…
– One of the nice things about brain surgery is that you can pick out all sorts of clever things to say for when you come to. I had a few quips lined up (“I have a splitting headache!”, “Who wants morphine? I do! I do!”, and “Which of you bastards tried to tip my…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
In Hardback, e-book, and audiobook from these booksellers:
