The Plot Thickens

About a half hour after I got back to work, Dr. Andersen called. They had some questions on the MRI and wanted to get another scan, this time with color. The dye would give them a better picture of what was going on in my head. Wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t take any more time than the last one did. I went back.


Same drill. I put my stuff in the locker, went into the room and got on the table. This time I asked for a rock station. The attendant took my hand and found a vein.

“Some people say they get a weird taste in their mouth when they get the dye injected,” she said. “But other than that you shouldn’t have any symptoms or a reaction,” she said as she injected me.

Sure enough, about sixty seconds later a strange, metallic taste bloomed in my mouth. It slowly subsided and we started the scan as John Mellencamp sang about pink houses for you and me.

There was an awkward silence as she unhooked me from the machine and we walked to the locker area, so I turned and asked her: “do you ever mess with people and tell them that everything’s going to taste like pepperoni for two days afterwards?” Either she didn’t see the humor in it or she was taken aback. She didn’t laugh. She just gave me this confused “what the hell was that about?” look and said “Uh, no.” I thanked her, got my stuff and left.
This time the drive back to work was a little more stressful; a brain tumor was starting to sound like a strong possibility. I didn’t really know much about them other than the fact that they were bad, really bad, and that you could die from them. Whenever someone got a brain tumor on TV, that was it. They were dead within minutes. If I had one, was it the size of a grape? An orange?

I wasn’t really having too bad of a time, all things considered. I wasn’t having headaches or seizures, the two symptoms I most associated with brain tumors. I wasn't dizzy. Other than the eyesight issues I felt fine. Deep down I thought it’d wind up being something goofy, like I ended up with the wrong eyeglasses prescription or something equally minor.


I’d been back at my desk all of forty minutes when the phone rang. It was Dr. Andersen again. “Kyle, we looked at the second set of MRI scans,” he began in a measured, serious tone, “and it looks like you have a small tumor in the center of your brain. It’s in the pineal region.” He calmly explained that it was still relatively small – about the size of a gumball – but that its location explained why I was having vision problems. Essentially, it was taking up space normally reserved for optical functions and it was putting pressure on the optic nerve so things weren’t functioning the way they should.

Predictably, my next set of questions were along the lines of “how the hell are we going to get this thing out?”

“I’m going to refer to you to Dr. George Greene,” he said. “He’s one of the best neurologists in town. If I had to see a neurologist, he’s the one I’d see,” he said.