One
One year ago my life changed. Forever.
My feelings are weird. Very weird. And I’m struggling to find how to articulate my thoughts. It feels like I’m reliving every moment that I can remember (and even some that I have only heard about). There is so much that I am thankful for… but it is very heavy to think through.
Seizures. A baseball-sized tumor found. Being in the hospital alone. Brain surgery. Slow recovery. Partial vision loss. Needing help up and down stairs. Spending most of every day on the couch. Walking slowly with my parents by my side. My friends not being able to come in our house to see me during a pandemic. Getting 45 staples taken out of my head. Hearing from my neurosurgeon that my tumor is cancerous. Devastation. Brain surgery again. Being in the hospital alone again. Recovery again. Getting 46 staples taken out of my head. Fitting my face to a mask. Laying on a table with my head locked in place and lasers shooting down on it for 33 weekdays in a row. My hair on the left side of my head falling out. Having to have my family drive me every time I left the house. Being immunocompromised. Hesitancy to do anything. Facial nerve pain. Low energy. Intense abdominal pain. More bloodwork than I can count. Chemo pills.
To skip over the severe reality of what has happened is silly. A tumor the size of the ball of my favorite pastime squished my brain so much that it made me have seizures while sitting on the couch. One brain surgery is enough in of itself… but then two within just over a month? Cancer treatment? As a guy in his mid-20’s? That’s rough. Then add extremely limited abilities to be able to see my people outside of my family while fighting cancer, one of the toughest diseases in the world? Having limited vision out of my left eye, constant facial numbness and pain, looking at the left side of my head with no hair for months? Feeling frustrated and wondering if I need to have “brain physical therapy” to be able to use my brain properly again?
Looking back over the last year, it is so easy to focus on the negative. My life will never be the same. The last year has been hard… and that’s barely including the events that happened across the world.
Get Nick Geter’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But those things listed above aren’t the only things that happened.
Our dog, Baxter, whining while sensing something was wrong. My brother hearing Baxter’s whines. EMTs who didn’t feel right to leave, even when things seemed to be ok. My nurses, but especially Kaitlin, treating me like family. Having incredible neurosurgeons. Feeling immediate peace. Receiving my phone with over 250 texts alone. Going home. Chick-fil-A milkshakes. Cards flooding into our mailbox. Learning of prayer happening literally around the world. Recovering faster than expected. Getting to see the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flying over Atlanta the weekend before my second surgery. Arriving at the hospital seeing friends standing with signs to support and pray for me. Talking about country music with my post-op nurse… and remembering it. The RISE playlist. Being introduced to people who have the same tumor. Worship night in our backyard. Riding with dad on a work trip and climbing a mountain 6 weeks after my second surgery. Receiving videos from friends and family every day of radiation. My radiation nurses becoming friends. Seeing clean MRIs. Getting a job willing to deal with my constant doctors appointments and my chemo pill weeks. My brain responding to new challenges like it is normal.
Not a single one of these things diminish how difficult the last year has been. But when looking at the hard, the “bad”, I can’t get past it without thinking of all the GOOD that has happened. I had a massive brain tumor in my head a year ago. Today I’m talking and moving like normal. The tumor had caused me to have an awful personality change. Today I feel like I am a better person because of what I’ve been through. In the last year, and still now as I continue the maintenance phase, there have been several days where all I have been able to focus on is putting one foot in front of the other. Today I feel that I have grown more in the last year than I ever thought possible. In the last year there have been several things that I CAN’T do. Looking back today, I can see that in humility I have learned to focus on what I CAN do.
I think this is why I am feeling so weird. There have been so many amazing things that have happened and that is what I have been fighting to focus on for the last year, but now that we are at the first anniversary, I am remembering what all we have been through. Thinking through both sides in my little brain is weighty.
To consider how much I’ve experienced in the last year, it seems impossible that I am where I am now. Three clean MRIs in a row. My blood counts still staying normal while taking chemo pills. My brain functioning normal. None of this could have happened without the amount of prayer over me in the last year. When you hear medical professionals sounding shocked at how well your body has recovered from what you have undergone, that humbles you in ways you could never imagine. My body is not where it is now because of human hands, though my doctors and nurses were INCREDIBLE pieces used. My body has far exceeded expectations because of my God molding me, growing me, shifting me. And I can’t wait to see where He’s wanting me to go from here… since clearly it will be nothing normal.
One. One year. One humbling year. One growing year. One prayer-filled year. One patient year. One hard year. As I contemplate the last year of my life, all of these things lead to heavy thankfulness. And at the end of the day, I wouldn’t change it for anything.
“We are the clay, you are the potter; we are the work of your hand.” — Isaiah 64:8
