Posts Tagged ‘laughing’
As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 9
November 19th, 2009 | 
Author: Ok, I have my emotions contained again and can go on with the story. After the doctor told me I couldn’t play the saxophone again, I think I was in a bit of a shock. After a while, I started to feel pretty depressed. I remember my friends and family members coming in and trying to cheer me up. They were listing all of my talents and telling me about all the other things I would be great at as far as choosing another line of work. Some even suggested neurosurgery but nothing they said would cheer me up.
The next day another Doctor came in to talk to me. He was the Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon who had originally opened up my head, took out my inner ear and sealed up my eustachian tube. I told him what the other Doctor had said about never playing the saxophone again and he told me that he would fix it so that I could still play my sax. He had worked with many professional musicians over the years and he understod how I felt. He said he would do whatever it took so that I could continue to play. I was very relieved after talking to him.
A few days later I went in for the surgery to seal up that eustachion tube permanently. It wasn’t as big a deal as the first surgery and only took a few hours as I remember. When I woke up I had that darn bandage on my head and half my head was shaved again. The ENT Doctor came in who had performed the surgery and he said that the surgery was a success and that I would never have a problem with this issue again. I don’t know what he did up there, but I’ve gone back to him a few times since then because of headaches and he didn’t even need to do an MRI or anything…….he knew that it wasn’t open again. He must of sealed that thing shut with super glue or something.
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As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 8
Ok, on with the story. If you’ve read parts 1-7 you know I’ve been through quite the ordeal. It’s over now. I can move on. Start living my life and not worry about what’s wrong with me. This was in the fall of 1995 and I’m doing pretty good. Working a full time job and gigging again. Although,……..about once a week I started getting these unbearable headaches. I never had headaches like these before. I just felt awful. My head would have this dull ache and sometimes sharp pains. I couldn’t stand noise or bright lights or anything. At times I would feel really nauseous, sometimes even throwing up. The only thing that would get rid of it was sleep. If I slept for any amount of time when I woke up it would be gone. I got in the habit when I had these headaches of taking Tylenol PM then falling asleep for 4-6 hours and when I woke up the headache would be gone. This was about every 7-10 days I think. I didn’t go to see anyone about these headaches because I thought they were just a side effect of having your brain operated on. Once in a while I thought maybe they left a scalpel in there or something but I always dismissed those thoughts as stupid.
In August of 1996 (almost a year later) I got one of my headaches. I knew it was coming and called in sick to work that day. It was a bad one. I immediately took some Tylenol PM and fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later and ran to the bathroom to throw up. My head was killing me! This was a really bad headache. I laid in my bed and a couple minutes later had to run to the bathroom again to throw up. This order of events continued for the next hour and soon it was all just dry heaves and my head felt like it was going to explode. I mean it was the worst headache you could imagine TIMES 2!
Finally, I got my roomate and told him I had to go to Mass General Emergency room and that something was seriously wrong with me. He drove me there as I moaned and threw up the whole way into a large black garbage bag. I remember sitting in that all to familiar emergency room hugging my big black garbage bag as I waited to throw up again. My head hurt so bad that I think if had had a gun I would have ended it right there. I was moaning and rocking back and forth.
As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 7
Well………..where were we? Oh yeah, in Mass General Hospital waiting for my next surgery. As I remember, it was 2-3 days later. They came to get me for the surgery and it was an emotional time. This was the big surgery where they were messing with nerves, arteries and not to mention my brain. I also didn’t know if it was malignant (cancer) or benign. I remember being wheeled in for the surgery and my Dad asked ”How you doing, son?” I responded ”This isn’t fun, Dad”. I was wheeled away with out knowing if I would see my family again. I remember praying at that moment that if I died I would wake up in heaven with God and if I woke up here that I would be surrendered to whatever my condition might be. I prayed hard for those two things.
They asked me to count backward from 100 and I again tried to see if my will power was strong enough to fight the drugs……….I made it to about 96 again and don’t remember anything else. This part of the surgery was pretty long. I think it was 12-13 hours if I remember correctly. I can’t imagine operating for that long but there were a few surgeons that all had different duties in the surgery so I would imagine they would take turns.
Next thing I knew I was waking up. It was like I had just fallen asleep a moment ago. Now this may sound a bit strange, but I’m going to share it because it really happened and I want to be as factual as possible here. When I started waking up I was in a big room where they put all the patients after surgery. The lights looked funny to me, like they were old. I looked around me and it seemed like the medical equipment was old. Next, a nurse came over to me and she was the happiest nurse I had ever seen in my life. She had a big smile and her clothes seemed like clothes you would see a nurse wearing in the 50′s. All of a sudden it hit me…………I had been transported back in time to the 50′s! You might think I am joking here but I really thought I had traveled back in time! I was giving it such serious thought that I was actually thinking of all the things invented since 1950 and trying to figure out what I could make tons of money with. I looked up a little later and I saw my parents walking up with big smiles on their faces. I had never seen them with such big smiles. My first thought was that these were imposters and that it had something to do with the time travel. My Mom started talking to me and I interrupted her with an urgent question “What year is it?” She looked at me funny……… “What year is it?” I repeated. She answered “1995, why?” I said “Are you sure?” She said ”Yes” and my parents exchanges a worried glance at one another. The conversation went on about the surgery and how I was feeling. The whole time my parents were talking though, I was thinking that not only had I been transported back in time but everyone else had also, and they didn’t even know it! At no time did it occur to me that I was a bit wacky from the drugs. Over the next few hours I slowly returned back to reality.
As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 6
I’ll do my best in this next part of the story to recount things in the proper order. To be honest these next few parts of the story are a little vague and cloudy to me.
I remember meeting with a Doctor to have the talk you have before a major surgery. I remember his name was Dr. Harsh. He basically laid out the plan for me, the options and the things that could go wrong. I remember thinking while he was talking ” Man, this guy is harsh!” It was a hard conversation to have. Basically, he told me that they wanted to take the tumor out by going through my left ear. Part of the surgery would take about 5 hours and they would cut around the top and back of the ear, cut through the skull and take out my inner ear. They would then wrap me up and a few days later go back in, lift up the left side of my brain and go underneath it to cut out the tumor. Now as you may know, I am a professional musician and teacher so I was very concerned about losing my hearing in one ear. I asked if there was another way to do it so I wouldn’t lose my hearing in that ear. He said there was, but it was much more complicated and dangerous. It involved going through the back of my nose via my face. I remember while he was talking about the dangers of that procedure that I interrupted him and said “I’ll lose the ear”. I figured I still had one good one and I would function and it would be better than being dead.
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As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 5
Here we are at Part 5 in the story………….A couple of days after the whole “Lenscrafters” experience I decided to go get some Chinese food with a good musician friend of mine down in Boston. During dinner I told him about all the things I have just told you in Parts 1-4 of this story. I remember going through every detail. He was asking a lot of questions and was bewildered at why I hadn’t gone to the doctors yet. He told me that his Dad was a prominent Psychologist in Boston and that he would talk to him and get some advice from him.
The next morning I went to work at my job at the convenient store. I kept hearing my friends advice in my head so I called my doctor to make an appointment for a physical. I think it was 4-6 months from that time. I don’t remember going into all the details about what I was going through but just booked a physical. As I was counting money in my back office a little later, the phone rang. It was my friend that I had had dinner with the night before. He said that his Dad said I should see a doctor ASAP. I told my friend not to worry and that I had made an appointment for 4-6 months later which was as soon as they could see me. I remember him saying that he thought that was too much time and that he would call me back. He called a few minutes later and with a very serious and urgent tone said that he had talked to his Dad again and that his Dad said that my situation sounded very serious and there was something very wrong. He told me to leave work immediately and go to the Mass General Hospital emergency room. I thought my friend and his Dad were overreacting and told him I would go after I was done with work. I hung up the phone and started to count the rest of the money on the desk but I was having trouble concentrating. I kept thinking about what he had just told me and was getting more and more anxious. Finally, I put all the money away in the safe and called my friend to ask if he would go with me to the hospital. He said he would meet me down there.
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As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 4
Hello again! Where was I? Oh yeah, around this time, my younger brother came out to visit me from Buffalo NY. I hadn’t seen him in awhile and he decided to come out to Boston for a visit. We had a lot of fun while he was here but it was interesting because the whole time he was here he kept saying “What?” “What did you say?” “Repeat that?” “Excuse me” ……….I was starting to get a bit worried that maybe he was losing his hearing! Finally near the end of his visit, when we were in my kitchen, I remember he seemed to lose his patience after a few too many “What did you say?” conversations. He gave me a lecture on enunciating my words. I remember it to this day. He asked me to repeat what I had just said and he pointed out that my speech was all slurred and mumbled and I wasn’t pronouncing my consonants with good diction. I think I remember so well because he had me try saying the phrase a number of times and he got so frustrated with me. Finally he said “Jeez man, what’s up with you?” ”Just pronounce your words!” He went home soon after that and I really didn’t think much of this incident at the time. The funny thing about this situation was that no one had ever talked to me about this up to this point. The guys I lived with never noticed it. The people I worked with never said anything. I think because the decline was happening slowly people that were around me all the time didn’t notice. They just thought I talked like that. It took someone like my brother coming who hadn’t seen me in so long to notice that I wasn’t speaking like I ought to.
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As Funny as a Brain Tumor Part 3
I’m back with Part 3. At this point in the story, things start to get really interesting. Before I delve into the rest of the story, I need to give you some history about myself. First of all, up until this point in my life, I was hardly ever sick. I never broke a bone. I never had to stay in a hospital. I went to the gym regularly. I didn’t even have health insurance up until this point in the story. I didn’t see any need for it. I was healthy and feeling fine (except for all the laughing……)
I took a job during the day to make some extra money at a convenient store. I had worked for this chain of stores when I was in college at Berklee so I could pay my rent and ended up becoming a store manager. I ended up quitting a few years after college because I had a gun stuck in my face a few too many times while I was being robbed and decided I would rather just go back to being a full-time musician.(those stories are for another time) I went back to work for this store as a store manager and a little bit later they asked me if I wanted health insurance……..I said sure. I didn’t really feel I needed it but why not? I signed up for health insurance. Looking back later, I realized this was a very very wise decision.
Soon after this time, I remember playing basketball with some friends of mine. We were playing hard and I was sweating and really thirsty so I went into the house to get a glass of water. I went to drink the water and it went half way down my throat and just stopped. You know when you go to swallow and your adam’s apple moves. Well, it felt like it got to that point and then my adam’s apple wouldn’t move. I remember just standing there and really trying to finish swallowing and finally it worked after a few seconds. I thought “That was weird” and went back outside to play basketball with my friends. This swallowing thing happened here and there sporadically and every time it happened I would think “That’s weird” but then just go on.
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As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 2
Ok, where was I? Oh yeah. So all this laughing is going on. As this is getting worse and worse things start to fall apart around me. My relationships are stressed because people think I’m a little strange (OK very strange), my relationship with my fiance ends (for a number of reasons……..but the constant laughing didn’t help) and my saxophone playing starts really going downhill fast!
Around this time, I started to notice more and more problems with my sax playing. I would go to gigs and get so frustrated. I would go to play an altissimo note that I had played a million times and it would be wrong. I would play a simple phrase and squeak ( I never ever did that), I would play a cool run of fast notes I always play and it would be a mess. I would be improvising a solo and have no ideas whatsoever! Besides all that, I couldn’t get through a solo without starting to laugh……… I remember many times where I would just stop playing in the middle of a solo and start laughing. The band leader would just look at me and say “What’s up?” with a rather annoyed look on his face. I felt like my time in that band was maybe drawing to an end so………..
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As Funny as a Brain Tumor! Part 1
Well, over the years I have told this story quite a few times. People are always interested in it and I hope someday that it will be on the discovery channel as one of those medical mystery shows. I thought I would share it here because many of you might get a kick out of it…………
Back in the early 90′s (1993-1995 time range) life was good. I was feeling great about many aspects in my life. I was playing the sax full time. Gigging all the time. Practicing all the time. I had a girlfriend and lots of friends. I was working out and my health was good. I was feeling pretty good about things.
Around this time I started noticing that I was laughing a lot. Have you ever met somebody who would laugh whenever they were uncomfortable or nervous? Well that was me. It started out where I would laugh at odd moments like during a serious conversation or when someone else was upset. I think the people around me would just write it off as “this guys a little strange………”
As time went on my laughing got even worse. It was now quite often the kind of laughing where you feel like you can’t stop. Your whole body is moving up and down and your laughing so hard that you fall off your chair. Have you ever laughed that hard? Well, I was doing it all the time. Many times a day. Let me give you a few real life scenarios just so you can understand.
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