Susan Spector

Word Count 600

Five years after surgery for a brain tumor, during my semiannual Zoom checkup, a young resident put the images of my latest brain scan on the shared screen. We sat face to face with the full-frontal view of Pinena, my tumor named for her place of origin, the pineal gland; the pinecone-shaped endocrine gland nestled between the left and right hemispheres.  It’s a place of myth, magic, and legend. Some say this third eye is an all-knowing, all-intuitive source of wisdom. 

Pinena sits dead center in the deepest part of the brain. Watching her is creepy and thrilling, kind of like a mirror in a fun house. When I look into this mirror, the veil is gone. I imagine looking into my soul, with all its fears, hopes, and dreams.

We usually looked at the images from a side profile. This was full frontal, face-to no face.  

I sat with my equanimity practice. I looked directly at Pinena, my mysterious companion, and all her uncertainty. I stayed calm in my faith without denying her reality—her unpredictable outcomes. 

The medical student was happy to keep staring at his screen too, rotating and manipulating the angles to see sagittal, lateral, axial, and coronal views. 

He expressed his frustration about not knowing the pathology. I tried to share some of my hard-won equanimity, the wisdom in not knowing, the beauty in the uncertainty of watch and wait.

He wasn’t buying it. He was focused on pathology and symptoms, maybe even fantasizing about getting an opportunity to go inside and find out more. He didn’t express much interest when I shared that since the brain surgery, I’ve walked my dog seven miles a day and this year added on a Pilates practice every week. 

When the neurosurgeon entered the Zoom Room, he asked if I was still writing novels. No, I’m writing essays now. Shrinking attention span, not from the brain tumor, just from the state of the world.  He informed the other student that I was a huge endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) success, a procedure that allowed the energy of my life to flow, no longer blocked by the tumor. 

Then, the surgeon asked the student if he could find the surgical hole of the ETV on the MRI. The student was nervous. He eagerly searched for the hole, wanting to please his teacher. After a minute, or an eternity to my fellow student, the neurosurgeon placed his electronic pointer on the hole in the third ventricle.

“You made me holy,” I blurted.

“ETVs are my favorite procedure to do. Yours is a huge success story today, but let’s knock on wood.” Ever the compliant, nervous patient familiar with neuro assessment commands, my hands instinctively grabbed my earlobes and rubbed my small Hamsa earrings. Always leave the door open, just a little, for luck to come in.

In the thousands of images of my brain I had seen since the surgery, I had never noticed the hole. The holiness. The perfect wholeness of the sacred organ, holes and all, and all the good things going on inside. I had been too scared to look that close. Too focused on what might be amiss. 

At the end of the spiritual encounter, I thanked the neurosurgeon, once again, for saving my life. He humbly thanked me back for the privilege, as well as the organic dark Mexican chocolates I had dropped off on his desk before heading into the noisy, clanking, nerve-wracking MRI machine, that unknowingly enlightened photographer, capturer of hidden blessings. 

Susan is the author of Keep Calm, It’s Just a Brain Tumor; My Year of Wabi Sabi Healing. Her essays have been published in Brevity’s Non-Fiction Blog, Jewish Literary Journal and The Jewish Writing Project.