OK Mr. Death, here's your green-eyed boy, and he ain't on your plate yet

I had hoped to get back into Strays more frequently.  But something came up.  Over the past days I've been told I had a stroke, brain cancer, and maybe something else they really don't know about, and maybe it was stroke, or a TIA, or a not too important thing.

I guess the history matters.  About 10 days ago I woke up around 4 am.  Not odd.  Usual reason. But when climbing back into the sack, I stayed awake and found I couldn't remember some names.  And I had a headache, not a huge sharp one, more of a big one on the left side.  OK.

Up later, off to the regular breakfast at the diner.  And I found my story-telling ability just sucked.  Hard to remember names and places.  One of my friends said later that I was having a hard time "reaching for words", which is about exactly right.  Plus the headache, still.

So I got back to the house, nervous, and called my doctor.  He barely let me finish the first sentence before telling me to go the emergency room.  So I did, and into another trip through the American medical system.

I'm not going to dump on the fact that these places now look like some combo of a hotel and a fortress and a corporate headquarters.    I guess I just wish that all the hospitals in the world looked like this; so do we all, and maybe someday they will.  Our American versions reflect that they involve landslides, avalanches of money.

They figured, of course, that I'd had a stroke.  A lot of testing and holding out your arms and asking who the president is.  All my physical stuff seemed fine, but I was still having some word gaps.  And for a guy as proud, absurdly proud, of his ability to speak and write as I am, that was not good.

So then begins the series of being inserted on contoured platforms into very large machines.

As it happened, one of them said I had a thing in my brain.  So after day one - maybe not a stroke. Maybe brain cancer.   This is really not sounding good.

In fairness these guys were dealing with a guy who looked like he had a problem.  The two or three regular members of the Strays audience will remember that I had head and neck cancer a few years ago, a lot of surgery and radiology and lots and lots of words here about the whole trip.  But as to a stroke... there the issues are, they say (1) my smoking (again!  these docs just do not like the fact that I smoked 30 years ago, and started when I was 15.  OK!  Bad!); and (2) my parents.  I love my parents and their stroke stories are sad but kind of beautiful,  but not mine, so not here.  But they had strokes.  My dad's was at 63, it killed him, and I'm 63, so hmm....

Oh, the word "stroke."  Incredibly it was one that I had a real problem with.  I had to come up with a physical image  - a batter's swing, a strike - to remember it.  Worked fine.  But I also looked up the word and holy smoke what a widely used and differentially meaning word.

And another thing, similar, about this ability to remember words.  We aren't remembering most words, we are just using them.  I didn't have to remember "using them, " or in any event it doesn't seem like remembering.  I'm thinking and out it comes in words, boom, right away.  But then you get to this stuff - placenames, people's names, things in punchlines.  That's what was hit.

Back to the hospital.  Going well into a second day, and I was still pretty concerned.  I mean, a brain surgeon came around to talk to me about brain surgery.  This is not a confidence-building event.  I asked if there were different looks to the different stuff in the brain, so he'd know what to take out. Answer is not really.  All brain tissue is brain tissue.  You mostly do it by looking at what the images tell you, the location, and by research as to what stuff does when it's there.  Oh, and maybe if it's near a fold.

And in my case, not likely to be an operation that would make sense.  They are not sure that what's there is what's wrong, whatever is wrong.  So it's tough to decide to what to excise.  Plus the image shows it in there pretty deep, pretty near language central.  A place I care about a lot.

The next day I got out.  The cancer guy was busy, and my regular doc, a righteous guy, said go home. On Monday I went in and the cancer guy's judgment was, probably a "vascular event".  I love that. Sort of sounds like what teen-aged boys used to hope for.  But just to know, say the docs, how about a PET scan?  (Your what? tenth? in the past five years.)  Sure, why not.

Now, PET results are in:  no cancer, but man really you really did break your clavicle last month.

Next:  dexamethasone!