What happened to you? “You have a…” the doctor’s accent is heavy as he continues. “Ben-ig, bin-eye…” Over his white-coated shoulder I can see the x-rays, the scribbled notes on them clear but in a language I can’t read, lines slanting over the “e”s, the “i”s, and a small upside down hat marking a change in consonants. Through the lace-curtained window, the green of the hills is faded, the houses without their usual red roofs; they are pastel now, pretty. You can see them as homes in a fairytale, the lace throwing patterns on the plastered sides; these could be roses, thorns, a climbing creeping vine twisting up over the door. I am distracted for a minute, drifting until I see the doctor’s frown. “Something here…” and a gesture. Beyond him the x-rayed images, the scribbles. This is my brain he’s talking about. This is a tumor in my brain.
What happened? The story of how I found out about, and had surgery for, my acoustic neuroma is one I have told many times since that ben-ig day. People always ask. They notice the asymmetry in my face, the one eye that still doesn’t blink, the wrinkles growing ever deeper on the left only; I can see them noticing, the faint confusion: a stroke? Or… They can’t think. It’s not the usual narrative, not the one you’d expect to hear. It starts out all right, but there’s a twist in the plot.
What? This is the story I tell: I was living in Prague, Czech Republic. Prague is a city of stories; fairytales tramp across the television screens, the stages. Around every cobblestoned corner lurks another legend. There are monsters in the laneways, watermen watching from the river’s waves, houses with red roofs and roses. There are fairies in white dresses who lie hiding in wait for the weary traveler, watching and wanting to trap you in their enchanted dancing. Like our own English stories, Czech tales are ever-familiar; every child knows them; every Czech knows to look carefully into the water, the waves. There’s a difference in the stories, though, and it’s not the characters: Czech tales don’t start with “once upon a time”; theirs is not about when but a more nebulous beginning. Bylo, nebylo, begins every Czech storyteller. There was and there was not.
There was a woman with a brain tumor, but then again, there was not. I was young. I was healthy. A little tired, maybe, and what was that in my left ear? It was probably nothing. The language classes I was teaching felt wearying; maybe I was getting a cold? The accents growing steadily harder to understand, and it’s true, English spelling can be confusing, the “g”s sometimes silent, the “i”s long or short. My pen on the whiteboard: there was the homework assignment but what was that behind me? “Miss?” I spun around, and so did the room, the tables tracking across my vision, students’ faces multiplying. Had I always been this dizzy? There are fairies who lie in wait for the weary. I was so dazed the doubled desks were a pattern in front of me, and it wasn’t because there was lace. What enchantment was this? In a strange dance, I wobbled and grabbed for a chair. The students glanced up startled from their workbooks. But I was fine: I was young, healthy. A little tired?
It is an odd thing to have a brain tumor and odder still to have one in a foreign city. A city of stories and mine seemed equally unreal, equally fairytalish. In the Czech Republic there are many tricks and tricksters to trap you up; it’s not just the white-dressed fairies and their dancing. If you are lost, you must beware the will o’ the wisps, the lights that will lead you astray, down a wrong and darkened path. I was young, but to learn more about my supposed tumor I travelled, still doubting, to the hospital. Down a twisting turning hallway, the thickness of the doctor’s voice in his second language greeted me again from behind complicated equipment, a spinning knob or two, a pattern of graphs that climbed and crept across a screen. He pulled up a chair, and lights flashed on and off the wall in front of me.
“Watch where I aim the beams,” he said. I waited for a mispronunciation, something to fit the complexities of knobs, but his directions were simple, understandable. Beware the will o’ the wisps, but I was healthy: the classroom desk movements did not occur to me. “No,” the doctor said. “Don’t turn your head.”
A light blinked on the left, and I tried to follow it. Forget the wicked wisps: I did try. I didn’t turn my head; I saw the shadow of my nose, the beak of it and then up to the curving top, and…then nothing. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t follow. The trying was exhausting…surely that was all it was? I was dizzy again; another trick for the weary, and if I stood up would I wobble again in a strange dance? Prague is a city of stories, and in it, there are fairies and will o’ the wisps who will trap you when you pass by. I clutched at the chair. This was ridiculous. It was probably nothing. I was young, healthy. The doctor is staring at the graphs. A bit tired…his mouth forming another, unmarked vowel, an “o” even I could understand.
In Prague, fairytales are everywhere, and there are monsters living in the laneways. It wasn’t a tale, though, this tumor. It was huge, four by four centimeters, the biggest anyone had heard of at the time (This city! A legend lurks around every corner). Enormous! It had to come out. Surgery was scheduled and the date imminent. More specialists were called in, some of their accents much less pronounced than the ben-ig doctor’s. I tried to pay attention, but it was like I was lost or trapped in some dance that grew stranger the more people that were involved.
There were more tests: an MRI machine loomed before me like another trap, and boy was I weary. Headfirst I lay on the moving metal bed, and the machine sides closed in on me. A test to tell the dimensions…the technicians in their not-white uniforms moved so swiftly it was like they were dancing. The machine ground in an odd sound that I could hear even inside it. I didn’t understand that either; another language to decipher.
There was a balance test, too. This was the last of them, to verify the findings. Oddly it reminded me of the wisps, the way I was supposed to step down a taped line that crept along the floor although straight this time. By now, though, I was too dizzy to do even a clumsy dance. My feet didn’t follow this line any more than my eyes had followed the light. Was I doomed to be lost? I grabbed for the chair that a specialist quickly pulled up for me.
I wondered: was this real? Prague is a city of stories; there are legends lurking; fairytales tramp across every screen. Beware the will o’ the wisps, for their lights will lead you astray. This wasn’t a path I ever envisioned myself taking. What symptom had that been that I dismissed? Something in my ear. I’d only just thought to check it out; I almost missed my initial appointment; I was lucky to get the ben-ig doctor at all, heavy accent notwithstanding. What symptom was that? I doubted it was anything. Every Czech knows their fairytales; every Czech child knows to peer carefully into the waves for watermen, to look around the corners. But I was young. I was healthy. “We will cut into your skull, beginning behind the cartilage here,” said the specialists, gesturing. There was and there was not. Bylo, nebylo: something I was beginning to understand.
Maybe this is how you feel when you are ill, the story creeping in like a vine over plaster and the reality blocked off, hidden. It’s been years now since the dizziness, the diagnosis, the cutting. Years since the end of it, though you can tell now; I know you can. You’ve noticed the marks on my face but you’re not sure you can read them. How many times I have told this? There was and there was not a woman with a brain tumor. Here, I will pull you up a chair. Look! There are lace curtains by the window; they are throwing patterns on the houses, roses and thorns and a wandering vine. Sit: you’ve come down by the path, and you’re wondering about my own patterns, my paralysis; I know you are. What happened to you? Sit: you are weary, and there are fairytales waiting to be told; Prague is a city of them. What kind of enchantment is this? Sit: let me tell you a tale. Bylo. Let me tell you mine.
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Colleen Addison did a PhD in how people look for health information and promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes, and heals in the Pacific Northwest, where there are ravens and squirrels to keep her entertained.
© 2024, Colleen Addison
Halfway Down the Stairs 