"This Thing In My Head"--or, The Trials of an Aphasic Writer

(posted by Bob)

Everyone forgets something—a name, an address, maybe your glasses—you feel silly.  When you’re an author speaking at a library and you can’t read the opening paragraph of your own mystery novel, you really hate that one.   

For me it took only ten days for a life of language to be gone.  Lucky for me, like most “writers”, I had a day job:  I worked on an armored car.  Turned out I couldn’t read there, either.    Linda, my wife, hauled me off to her doctor—I didn’t have one—and the doctor sent me to the emergency department.    I had cancer.

In that part of my brain where I read and write, a mass had grown to the size of a golf ball.   It was called a glioblastoma multiforme.   The CT scan and MRI showed a round, white circle with a large, black, necrotic center.  Grim faces all around....

Tags: brain surgery, glioblastoma, icu, sedation

(posted by Linda)

We were telling Bob's GBM story here, and we stopped in November.  The reason, to be truthful, is that Bob was doing pretty badly, and he didn't want to post any news about his condition on his website.  Well, now he's doing much better, and I want to continue the story.  One reason is that Bob has some fascinating things to post about it, and another is that, if any other family of someone with GBM stops by here, I was hoping to give them some real-world idea of what they'll experience as their friend or family member goes through surgery, chemo, and radiation.  I had a wonderful reference book to consult, don't get me wrong, but all the stuff you will read from medical people constitutes the Sanitized Version.  When you are about to sign a consent form for radiation, for example, and you read the dry laundry list of side effects:  "short term memory loss, weakness, possible loss of the ability to read and/or write..." you just can't picture how those things are going to show up in your daily life, and all the nuances of having to cope with them.

So here is...

Tags: brain surgery, glioblastoma, icu, sedation

(Posted by Linda)

Don'tcha just love good news?  We've got two bits here:

First, and best, Bob did great up at NIH this week.  Thing Two is smaller in size and they are very happy with how he is doing.

Second, there is a NEW Art Hardin short story out!  (Actually it is not so short...it's 37 pages, but they're all good pages.)  We are working on trying to get it as a free download, but Amazon and Barnes and Noble aren't allowing that right now, so for now it's .99 cents on your Nook or Kindle.  If you have never read an Art Hardin mystery, now is a great time to try one for (almost) free.

Happy St. Patty's Day everyone...

Tags: art hardin, glioblastoma, nih, short story, the small matter of ten large

Tags: glioblastoma, richmond times-dispatch, writing