Introducing Mildred

Brain Tumor Part 3.5

When I was a kid, my grandmother bought a firetruck. She named it Big Bertha. That is my maternal grandmother in two sentences. She also painted a clown face on a dent in her car. Source of my humor, identified.

Taking after her, my first instinct when I learned about my brain tumor was to name it. However, as it was supposed to be gone after a month and I wasn’t in the best mental space, I didn’t.

But not everything went according to plan. (Sorry, spoilers if you haven’t read the first three parts, go read them now - I’ll wait.)

Everybody caught up? Okay.

I have been aware of the tumor for 10 years; she’s been with me for roughly 20 years. We have our good days, we have our bad days. But, she’s always there, in the back of my mind.

I have always thought of her as a snowman. That’s what my neurosurgeon referred to as the shape of the two tumors, both round, one smaller and on top of the other.

As I’ve been writing about her for the past few months, I’ve been thinking about giving her a name.

If you’ve been here before, you may notice I replaced all the images with family cartoons. When creating our family portrait, I felt the need to include the Snowman. If you scroll through all the images, she is in every one, along with my husband and our cats.

If she’s going to be in every family portrait, she gets a name. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mildred.

image generated by author using Adobe Firefly

She’s a she. I can’t explain it, it’s just obvious. And she needed an older name — something that sounds like a pushy Great Aunt who demands a kiss when she sees you, makes herself comfortable in your favorite chair, and doesn’t take the hint when it is time to leave. I saw it. Perfect. Mildred.

She is the uninvited member of our group. The thing that stole one-quarter of my visual field, thousands of dollars in tests, surgery, and radiation, and causes me a lot of pain. Like a child.

She’s made herself comfortable; I might as well accept it and do the same. You can judge for yourself what that says about me.

She can be a strange comfort: Why didn’t I see that? Because of Mildred. Why are my dreams so weird lately? Mildred must be moving. Why do I have a headache? Because ‘it’s a toomah.’

Like many family members, I get to see her about once per year. She’s just a single circle now, but no less troublesome. Last I saw her, she was about the size of a grape.

When I make enough money from writing, I plan to get a tattoo of her, two, actually. A large one on my forearm, to celebrate what I’ve been through with her. And a tiny one at the base of my skull where the incision from surgery ended. Plus, if they have to go back in, my neurosurgeon won’t need to put an X on my forehead again.