I was sitting in the cold, organized white doctor’s office in the famous Cleveland Clinic. It’s a stereotype and this is what sterile looks like. I was alone, sitting in this weird chair that reminded me of the dentist. I looked over to my right and I saw the empty visitors’ chairs where my parents had promised to be.
At this time Dr. Woodard walked in. He’s a tall black man with a build like a fridge. His voice is high and soft. He sits across from me to tell me the results of the tests and scans. I have what is called an osteoma. It’s a tumor. This one is connected to the wall of my left eye socket. Typically, osteomas are just a shell of bone, ‘simple’ to get rid of. You drill into it and break away the bone, “like an eggshell.” Mine, though they didn’t know this at the time, was special, a rarity, of solid super dense bone, all the way through.
He tells me it’s pushing my eye over and out. That it’s growing towards my brain, slowly. He tells me he wants to perform brain surgery. He explains I could have permanent double vision, go blind in my left eye or even die. He lets me know that if I don’t have surgery, I could die. He doesn’t give percentages which I know would help, and I don’t ask.
The weather in my mind begins to pick up and a little voice tells me, “You’re going to die.”
I called my dad and gave him the news. Then I drove back to campus where I promptly filled up an empty coke bottle with bourbon and crème de la menthe. I thought it would be the equivalent of a mint julep. This is the first time in my life that I get drunk, and I drink to forget. The dark clouds subside, for the time being.
**A few weeks later**
The rain was falling hard. Just a kind of hissing sound like the world was the mouth of a snake. The heavens had been blanketed with gray, and everything seemed to turn a shade of blue. Things were getting rowdy in my head.
I don’t remember most of the day, but I do remember rushing up to my room, my mood a mess. My roommate looked up from his work as I slipped the scissors into my jacket pocket. I didn’t care if he knew. What was he going to do?
“I’m going out.” I said. He was silent, getting back to work, as I stepped out the door and went downstairs. I left the dorm building and quickly walked down the street and then turned going down another. I made my way to a bench that was just hidden by a spruce tree, and took out the scissors, my weapon of choice. Well, not really. It was all I had. They weren’t even very sharp. I held the blade to my wrist, down the road not across the street. I had it in me to do it.
The storm inside my head grew worse. I wouldn’t allow the uncertainty of my tumor or the surgery to be what takes my life. I had control here, me. Lightning struck and I saw faces. I pictured everyone I cared about and I just couldn’t do it. I wept.
My mind brought me back to a conversation I had with my father:
“You know what the worst thing you can do to a loved one is?” he asked, out-of-the-blue.
“No, what?”
“Suicide.”
“What?” I knew he was throwing me a hint. He clearly thought for some time that I was suicidal, which currently, I wasn’t. Unlike me, he was never one for confrontation.
“It’s selfish. You kill yourself and leave all these people behind blaming themselves. They always think they should have known or there was something they could have done. You never really get over it.” I don’t know how you should respond to something like that. It may seem harsh, but granted, my father spent hundreds of hours consoling and basically acting as therapist for countless ‘victims’ of suicide.
