Something Abnormal

Months later Claire B, my interior decorator and next door neighbor, and I were standing, in what was to become the guest wing of our new house, discussing which wallpaper to use in the guest bedroom when I began to feel real dizzy and felt like I was going to faint. There was nowhere to sit down so I just leaned my back against an unfinished upright and sank to the floor to a squatting position. Soo the dizziness passed away. I called the doctor the next morning and told him about my dizzy spell so he called in a prescription for Anti-Vert from the pharmacy and this seemed to take care of the problem. But little did I realize how much lay ahead of me.

At another time, Jack noticed that I was having trouble understanding some things that I normally would have been able to understand easily. AS we look back over it now, he didn’t know about my dizzy spell and I didn’t know I was having trouble understanding, so neither of us suspected anything. We were so busy trying to finish up the new house.

Finally, we moved in July 4, 1982. We got the boxes unpacked, the books on the bookshelves and the pictures hung. We were having such a good time entertaining our friends in our new house… a church choir supper, a party for our tennis group, my church circle, our supper club, etc.

Eleanor came for Christmas, 1982 and she noticed that I was having a problem with my memory. I brushed it aside with, “I don’t think anything could be wrong with me; I feel too good… and it’s been nearly nine years since I had the brain tumor. And, too,” I argued, “we were told that it would be most unlikely for me to ever have another one.”

But, after about two months, I woke up three consecutive mornings with bad headaches that seemed to not want to go away. I started putting two and two together and realized that I was feeling more tired than usual and my tennis game was not up to par… and that dizzy spell! I knew, since we now had a CT scanner in our Orangeburg Hospital, I should go have a scan made.

My appointment was Friday, February 18, 1983. Jack and I had no sooner walked in the door from the hospital than our family physician called. We, Jack on one telephone and I on another, we were told that “something abnormal showed up on the scan! It was big! And in that same general area as the first brain tumor”. I felt numb… I could hardly take in what I was hearing. I was to be admitted to the Richland Memorial Hospital in Columbia by two o’clock Sunday afternoon. Jack was to pick up the CT Scans from our Orangeburg Hospital to take up to the Richland Memorial Hospital for consultation.