WebMD Ruins My Evening

That voice, that little worrying whore who has stolen so much of my precious time over the years, won't shut the f*&% up.

I have been known to spend hours on line, diagnosing myself with everything from leukemia (didn't I bleed an awful lot after I cut myself shaving last night?) and lymphomas to multiple sclerosiss, and, of course, brain tumors. Sometimes the voice just whispered, making sure I was constantly aware that it could come at any time, that diagnosis that changes everything, that widows my husband and leaves my children motherless. Other times it screamed, enveloping me, rendering everything else irrelevant, consuming me completely. Over that 10-minute drive home from the ER, the whisper was building steadily, and I indulged in a habit I'd broken years earlier...WebMD.

Meningioma. I spelled it wrong initially. How could I have something I couldn't even spell? Little did I know within days I'd be an expert on the topic.

Meningioma. It actually didn't sound that menacing, despite the dread -oma suffix. Maybe it was some sort of cyst, scar tissue, a pimple on my ass for all I knew. It couldn't be anything terrible. I mean, it couldn't be a brain tumor. No doctor would tell you you had a brain tumor, no matter how small or benign, and send you on your way with a "have a good evening" in the same breath.

Brain tumor. I'd dedicated my adult life to worrying about just such an event, and in the moment that those two words appeared on the screen, I realized something...I had never actually thought it would happen. Somehow I had believed that all the anxiety, all the sleepless nights, all the moments I sacrificed joy to worry, would pay my dues, and it would never come to pass.

But there it was. Brain tumor. It existed in the lining of my brain. It exists in the lining of my brain. It's almost certainly benign, and though with only one CT scan I'd heard conflicting reports on size, it was small. But it's a brain tumor. Two words. Ten letters. My life changes.