LAUREN'S LIFE: When Life Changes Forever, Part V

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The series was originally published in 2011.)

The days and weeks leading up to my brain surgery were really a blur. I was numb most of the time. How is one supposed to feel knowing in a few short weeks they could be doing something that could result in so many bad things?

I really didn’t venture too far to the bad side. I just couldn’t.

I can’t remember much about what happened on Christmas that year, in 2007. I’m an artist, so I do remember painting a bunch of signs for my family members who gather at my wonderful cousin’s house every Christmas Eve.

We all grew up together, and to this day, remain very close. I needed to let them all know just how much my aunts, uncles, cousins, sister and brother all meant to me. Each of them received a sign I painted that simply said, “Family is Everything.”

And it still is.

Then came that new year, 2008, with that day coming up really soon. My parents were kind enough to rent a beautiful hotel room just a block down the street from Sloan-Kettering for me and my husband to stay the night before my surgery.

I had to get a very heavy duty MRI done on the afternoon of Jan. 16, and I needed to be at the hospital bright and early for my surgery, at 4:30 a.m., on the 17th.

The wicked MRI - oh, it was wicked - was one that made me horribly dizzy and nauseous even laying down. I’ve had so many since then that they really don’t even bother me anymore. But this particular one was horrendous.

I felt like I was going to pass out, and asked the nurse to stop. She ended up calling Dr. Gutin because I found out this was the very detailed MRI that he would use during my surgery the next morning.

Thankfully, I had endured the unpleasantness long enough for them to get enough detailed pictures of my head. Unfortunately, they had to leave the lovely suction cup/electron gadget/marked-with-purple things stuck all around my head.

I was leaving the MRI place thinking that, at the very least, I was going for a nice lunch in the city with my husband and friends. But, still, the thought kept recurring: I had to wear these horrible, degrading things on my head. Ugh.

Thank God I had a big hat.

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel room where we had some coffee, and prepared to just tough it out. It was late afternoon and getting dark.

But I was so incredibly grateful that I had my calming, spiritual friend Naomi with me, at that time.

Earlier in the day, I met her at the hospital. I needed someone to say the right things to get me through. I needed someone to help me get through what very well could have been my last day.

She is an interfaith minister now, but as long as I have known her, she has always been a calming influence in my life. And on a night like that one, which I can honestly say was the most difficult in my life, she was my angel. Not sure what I would have done if she was not there.

We talked. We prayed. We laughed. We cried. And we prayed some more. I know I even dozed off-and-on a bit.

Before I knew it, it was time to go to Sloan-Kettering. It was January 17, 2008.