Chapter 1

JANUARY

After you see a picture of the inside of your brain with a pear in it, you start feeling like, well, like you have a pear in your brain. You start looking at people around you like, “Humph. Must be nice not to have a pear in your brain.” But the weirdest thing was, before I saw the picture, I didn’t feel it. I felt surprisingly normal. Sure, it was odd that I’d get a head rush every time I lifted something, but it must have been that I wasn’t drinking enough water. Also, it was odd to feel tingling in my legs and feet after sitting at my desk for extended periods, but it was probably bad circulation. I just needed one of those standing desks that everyone raves about but soon will be overflowing in landfills when people realize that combining two sucky things like standing and work is a horrible idea. And my “allergies,” wow. My constant throbbing headaches were getting worse and I was finding it harder and harder to breathe at night after I got into bed. But, as everyone kept saying, “the pollen is really bad this year!”

If you hadn’t guessed it already, I had been compartmentalizing and explaining away the signs that I had a brain tumor. Then again, not even the most paranoid hypochondriac would imagine that these seemingly unrelated annoyances would be the symptoms of a massive brain tumor. Besides, who has time to go to the doctor when you have a bunch of little people’s doctors’ appointments to get to? When I was executive producing on The Jim Gaffigan Show, I went to work with a sprained foot and just got a cane from the props department. I didn’t have time to get sick. The show of life must go on.

Perhaps the most obvious symptom I ignored was the nearly complete loss of hearing in my left ear. Over the past couple of years, I had noticed that when watching TV with Jim, I frequently asked him to repeat something a character had just said. I justified this as another example of how my “selfish” husband just had the primo position in the bed: smack between the two speakers for optimal listening enjoyment, while I, the ol’ buffer, was shoved to the side in the second-class position. At crowded holiday parties or in large groups of people, I frequently found myself leaning in to hear conversations, and even then I still couldn’t make out the words, so I would just smile and nod and say “Totally!” and hope to God they weren’t asking me if they looked fat in their outfit.

In January 2017, on a long flight from London to New York City with my family, I was not surprised to learn that I got the bum headphones with only one side working (it figured). One of my children called me over to their seat to fix their iPad, and, after I wiped the thick layer of kid-goo (most likely Cheetos dust and apple juice) off the screen so that it would again respond to their touch, I returned to my seat and placed the headphones over my ears. They had been twisted so that the “bad” side was now on my opposite ear. Funny thing was that the “good” side was now muffled. It took a few minutes of switching ears for me to realize that it wasn’t my headphones. My left ear seemed to have stopped working. I could kind of hear out of it, but it was the type of sound that would register if you stuffed eight wet cotton balls in there. I don’t remember being that concerned about it. I guess I chalked it up to “Well, I did stand too close to that speaker at the Chili Peppers concert in 2000; it’s my fault. I guess I’ll just not hear out of that ear now.” I didn’t even mention it to anyone. I didn’t want to seem “old.”

A couple of months later I was at our family practitioner’s office.

The Clown Car

When I take my five kids to the doctor, it’s always a big show because I bring them all at once, and there’s five of them. It’s like a field trip for shots. The look of confusion and empathy on the faces of the other parents sitting with one or two kids in the waiting room would entertain me for days. Is she really bringing in five kids? Or is she like a dog-walker for other people’s kids? Five appointments equal five bills. I’m sure over the years we’ve financed a few doctors’ summer homes.

During these visits that instantly transform any exam room into a clown car, I normally have about twenty pages of forms with me that require a physician’s signature for my children to participate in school and camp activities. I place enormous importance on these forms and with good reason. If you miss checking off a box or leave out a birthday or a date, the form will be rejected and you will have to return to the doctor’s office, which you don’t want to do because that’s why you almost killed yourself by bringing all the kids to the doctor at the same time. Coordinating appointments like this is a magnificent scheduling feat, and I’m not going to let some stupid incomplete form ruin my masterpiece.

Now, if we could only fit a doctor in here…

During this particular episode of the circus, Patrick and Michael, my four-and five-year-olds, were climbing all over the high exam table, crinkling and ripping the paper that covered it. Well, at least if they fall off and break a bone, there’s a doctor nearby, I thought. Jack, eleven, was dismantling a model of a body part that, unbeknownst to him, might have been a uterus (or maybe a throat; didn’t get a good look). Katie, seven, was erupting in gales of laughter at the wild antics of her brothers. Marre was mortified, as any twelve-year-old girl would be. She glared at me as if to say, “Really, Mom, couldn’t you just have stopped after you had me?”

I was squeezed into a corner of the exam room, shuffling through my forms while my doctor was juggling my children for weighing and measuring with the skill of a ringmaster. I was coughing, a cough that had started back during flu season, turned into seasonal allergies, and then never disappeared. I complained to her about how the last time I brought my circus into the clinic, it was for the flu shot and we all got the flu anyway and I felt like I still had it. Then Dr. Hops started explaining something to me that sounded a lot like the parent voices in the Charlie Brown cartoons. I turned my head so that my right ear was facing her and said, “Could you repeat that?”

She looked at me with concern and repeated, “I said that the flu shot really didn’t work this year; but more importantly, what’s wrong with your left ear?”

“I don’t know, it feels like it’s clogged or something. I can’t really hear out of it.”

“How long has that been happening?”

I don’t know how the term “sheepish” got started because I’ve never known a sheep to act sheepishly. I really don’t have much experience with sheep but I’ve seen sheep, and “sheepish” behavior as far as actual sheep are concerned is just wandering around eating grass, but I’m talking about the kind of sheepish as it applies to human behavior, meaning “embarrassedly.”

I sheepishly replied, “I have no idea, but I think that ear has been bad for quite a while.” You know that feeling when a doctor asks you a simple question about yourself that you don’t know the answer to and you feel embarrassed and dumb? Yeah, that. I recall the time I was in very early labor with one of my children and I was feeling the tremendous pressure of the baby’s head dropping lower and lower. Suddenly I had this feeling like I peed a little (sorry, guys), but it was super weird because it just sort of happened without the feeling of peeing. So I called my midwife and said, “Hey, I think my water broke!” and she was quiet for a beat and said, “What do you mean, you ‘think’ your water broke? Either your water broke or it didn’t!”

Before you think that was a harsh reply, let me explain that this was pregnancy number four and that I’d had all my babies at home with a midwife. When you decide to go this route you are supposed to make a commitment to being aware of everything you are going through and actively participate in the process during the entire prenatal period. So, in other words, it’s kind of stressful for a dum-dum like me. Although this was my fourth time in third-trimester labor, I had never experienced my water breaking early so I had no idea what it felt like, and I also was guilty of not knowing anything about it other than a sort of 1950s Hollywood version of the phrase.

“Ricky! My water broke! Call Fred and Ethel!”

“Well, I guess it feels like it broke a little.” I heard my midwife sigh before she asked, “Did you feel your water break and experience a ‘splash’ of water?”

“No, it was more like a trickle.”

“Could it be that you peed?” I hadn’t peed in my pants since that time in the carpool in nursery school, and I was still traumatized by the experience.

“I didn’t push down to pee.”

“Jeannie, you have a nine-pound baby pushing down on your bladder. At this point you don’t have to push down.”

Once it was determined that my water did not break and I had in fact unknowingly peed, I was reassured, but sheepishly reassured because I became aware that I was unaware. I had the exact same feeling when Dr. Hops asked about my hearing.

She repeated, “Do you have any idea how long you haven’t been able to hear out of that ear?” I looked at her the same way you would if someone asked you to perform a complex math equation in your head. “So, you just lost the hearing in one ear and you didn’t think anything of it?”

I’m sure Dr. Hops was not trying to rub it in, but I felt a bit silly. I had corresponded with her many, many times since the hearing had started to go, but it was always about a kid’s rash, a kid’s bloodshot eye, a kid’s earache, or a strange spot on a kid’s foot. Notice a theme there? I rarely mentioned myself, unless it was to complain about how exhausting it was to manage my basketball team. Prior to having kids, if I had lower back pain I would go to the ER and get tested for an imagined kidney infection. Those days were over. As any mother or other busy person can tell you, there is little time for superfluous doctor visits.

She looked at me, concerned, and indicated my left ear. “Can you hear anything at all on that side?”

“What?” I joked.

Dr. Hops looked in my ear with that ear-looker thing. “I don’t see any swelling. I’m going to write you a referral to a specialist.” Great. Another appointment. She must have seen that expression on my face that said, “Maybe I’ll find some time next year to call this guy,” because she looked me in the eye and said, “Promise me you’ll follow up on this.” I’d like to think if she hadn’t been so firm, the course of my life, or the lack thereof, would have been dramatically different.

At this point the younger children, taking advantage of being unsupervised, were going completely bonkers, running amok in the tiny exam room, germing up all the stethoscopes and various instruments, blowing into rubber exam gloves, and possibly breaking the model uterus. I hugged my precious school forms to my chest lest they become additional props for the clown show, looked her right back in the eye, and agreed to follow up.

The first ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist I called about a week later was not available to take new patients. Who knew ENT doctors were in such demand? I always figured they were combo doctors because there weren’t enough patients to cover those specialties individually: “There’s enough people who need an eye doctor, but the ears, nose, and throat? We’ll just make that one position.” It’s as though they’re trying to cut overhead. Or it’s random, like how alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are also oddly thrown together.

It took me three phone calls and about twenty minutes of hold time to figure out that this ENT doctor was not taking new patients. I fired off a quick email to Dr. Hops, letting her know that I had indeed fulfilled my part of the bargain by following up, but unfortunately, I was unable to be seen. I was kind of hoping that she’d respond with, “Well, you tried. See you next time your kids need some forms filled out.” Instead, she emailed back quickly with the name of a different ENT specialist to call.

“I want you to see Dr. David Godin. He’s good. Call him.” I know, the fact that I get quick email responses from a doctor seems more unrealistic than my surviving a brain tumor with flying colors, but I’m telling you the truth. Having a personal correspondence with a doctor has become a thing of the past, so Dr. Hops is an anomaly in the medical community—she responds immediately. I chalk it up to her being Canadian. She has a small-town, hang-a-shingle-out style of doctoring that is a welcome oasis in the desert of New York City. I have so much love and appreciation for Dr. Hops.

Normally, to contact a doctor you must deal with the “front of the house,” which is analogous to being caught in a house of mirrors with no lights on. To be fair, I am sure it’s a tough job to have to deal with whiny, angry sick people all day. Even getting a simple message to a doctor is like getting a bottle of water past airline security. For anyone who has dealt with a crabby medical receptionist, you know what I am talking about. I dreaded calling this new doctor so much I forgot about my ear. I literally forgot the reason I was going to the doctor. I was only on a mission to make an appointment to please Dr. Hops. She deserved it.