Chapter 8

GOOD FRIDAY

VIP MRI

The next day, Good Friday, our schools were closed. I covered my bases with the kids by farming them out on playdates, not telling them or any of the other parents why our plans had changed. They didn’t need to know what was going on yet because we barely did. I generally look forward to these days off and spending quality family time (slipping away from time to time to deal with the huge stack of production work on my desk), but this day I couldn’t get them out to their friends’ houses fast enough.

Good Friday is a pretty significant holy day, and since I wouldn’t be making it to Mass, it was important to me that I was “spiritually covered” before I went in for my day of scanning. Luckily, I had the nuns. Many years earlier I’d gotten involved with the unique Sisters of Life order. Unique in that they are all really young (as nuns go). I think the average age is like under forty. I’d met them in the hospital during a difficult situation with one of my pregnancies and they were there for me in a real time of need. I never stopped reaching out to them when I needed some support. I would call their convent and rattle off a list of requests, normally involving scary worries about kids, babies, or pregnancy. Never underestimate the power of calling nuns. They really should charge an hourly fee. Try as we may, we non-religious-order people cannot even come close to the spiritual lives that religious-order people live. Their day is literally built around prayer time, including quiet chapel time that allows one to go into a deep state of communication with God.

Technically Catholics are supposed to be doing this type of God consultation once a week at Sunday Mass, but for me that time is normally spent taking kids to the bathroom (that ol’ childhood trick), picking up crayons off the floor, or making a shopping list in my mind. The more I learn about my Catholic faith, the more I realize what a bad Catholic I am. In times of deep spiritual need or crisis, I have resolved to stick to a prayer schedule, and almost every time I have failed miserably. That’s where the nuns come in. “Can you please pray for me and Jim and the kids on Good Friday? I won’t be able to make the three o’clock service because I gotta get scanned for a 3-D rendering of my brain for a craniotomy on Monday.”

“I think God will understand,” said the nuns. God probably understood better than all the people whose emails were going to sit unread, whose phone calls would go unanswered, and whose appointments had been canceled, but for the first time I could remember, I couldn’t have been less concerned about my to-do list.

Jim went with me to radiology on the lower, lower level at Mount Sinai. This time it really felt like going to a spa. At the last place, the robes were sort of shabby, and all random colors and patterns. I remember that during the fateful MRI with Margarita Guy, I was wearing a faded olive green with a brown floral print, and the time before, when Jiminy Cricket was concerned about my fake baby, it was a washed-out pale blue with a black paisley pattern. The robes at Mount Sinai all seemed brand-new and they were supercute. The solid Cyrene gown was to be put on first with the back open. Then over that, you wore a soft seersucker robe with pockets and a real belt. It was like a little outfit that you could easily show up in at a post–Memorial Day garden party in the Hamptons after your MRI.

I was escorted into a spacious booth where the curtain totally covered the opening, and then some. I was also given a nifty tote bag for my clothes, as well as a little Tupperware container for my jewelry. There were even socks with teeny pads on the bottom. As I prepped for the full day of CT scans and MRIs of my head and neck, I felt comforted for the first time since this crazy diagnosis. I knew I had a colossal brain tumor that had an 80 percent chance of not being cancer (still ignoring that 20 percent), but I felt like I was finally doing something about it. I had a plan. I was not in limbo anymore. I was in really great spirits under the circumstances and I felt strangely peaceful. It was the not-knowing part that caused me anxiety.

In the room, they gave me a heated blanket and headphones that played music during the incessant banging of the scan. I mean, I still heard all the horns and jackhammering, but I felt like they were at least putting forth an effort to make it more tolerable. There was also a little skylight inside the tube, directly over my eyes, so it definitely felt less claustrophobic. I wondered if the resort-like scanning was unique to that hospital, or if it was simply because I had something life-threatening, so now I was in the VIP room: Very Important Patient.

Regardless of why, I felt waves of gratitude: To Dr. Hops, for insisting I get my ear checked. To Beth, for telling me she had a feeling I was going to see Dr. Bederson. For the text exchange with John, in which he told me he needed to see the scan. To Marita for the Bat Signal. For Dr. Godin calling his friend in Florida. For walking with Jim into Eight West at Mount Sinai and seeing the doctor who was the most qualified in the world to deal with the specific type and location of my brain tumor. None of it was an accident—God was with me. Not some scary guy with a long white beard who punished bad people and helped only good people, but a real force that guided me to this point of peace because I asked him for help. If you just decided to stop reading because I got too Jesus-y, check out this photo I took of Jim in the waiting room when I was finished with all my scans:

When I saw Jim in this state I had my first good laugh in three days.