first attempt [part 2]

Talking to a friend the night before we joked about the possibility of asking the surgeon to open my brothers head up perpendicular to the last incision to create an extremely badass scar from his far to his front temple, making an X where the hair refuses to grow. I rather doubted my brother nor would the surgeon go for it, however the idea caused a fit of nervous laughter as we stifled our feelings with yet another bowl of pot in the makeshift bong; a feeble attempt to suppress our feelings about my brother having brain cancer for the third time in four years, not that the attempt was successful.

It’s not that I even knew these people at the time of the first one. My friends are not troopers, when things get awkward I feel that most people tend to run. I accept this as much as one who is left by themselves to deal with this could. For the first tumor I was a completely different person. Then I had a bright future. I was attending university and was about to marry my quote-unquote high school sweet heart. I had a nice apartment, nice friends, a masters program waiting for me to jump into.

The first tumor almost killed my whole family and it wasn’t even cancerous. A malignant tumor the first time, but one that was pressing down on his brain causing him to seizure. I remember the phone call that I received just a few days before my birthday telling me that my brother was going to have to have brain surgery for a tumor that he had had for over 4 years. Our family doctor, instead of ordering an MRI to be done over those four years, simply gave him medication after medication to try and stop the massive and debilitating migraines he suffered from. She could have probably had him diagnosed years prior had she followed proper protocol. As you can tell my family all hates her and the funniest part is she left the family practice to work as an Oncologist. Anyways, the first time was the most shocking by far. No one can prepare you for a family member to have such a terrible illness. It’s strange because shortly after my brother was diagnosed a neighbor was diagnosed with one as well as my boss’s daughter.

The second time my brother was diagnosed it was only shortly after the first. By then I was so doped up on medication to try and treat my own illnesses that I can hardly recall whether they used stitches or staples to tape his head shut. I didn’t know anyone now that I knew then. It seems as I’ve always thought, disaster & sadness are quite a repellent. I change friends as often as I change, well, maybe more often than anything else. It seems no one wants to deal with all this baggage. As soon as the word cancer was added to the mix, people ran like frightened flies over a carcass. The surgery that time was followed by radiation treatments, a long and painful process for my brother. Since he had to have them for so long the second time he can no longer have them or the radiation would cause brain damage. It’s sad in a way simply because it cuts down his chances this time. We all know this. It hangs over our heads whenever mention of chemotherapy is brought up because we know that is the only option left besides removing them every time if they continue to reoccur. A potentially fatal option.
As I sit in the car I think of the night before, looking at my new friend who I acquired a year and a half before and he smiled sadly, looked down at his hands. It isn’t there fault that this is so awkward.