The First Few Days

In June, 2003 my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor. At the time I really didn't know what that meant because I was eight, but I knew it was bad.
Starting in late May of 2003 my dad started having massive, crippling headaches which was kind of scary for me because at that age, your dad is superman, he's unstoppable, or at least mine was. I just remember him laying in his recliner all day, everyday because his head hurt so bad.

In 2003 my dad was kind of on a job carousel and he was about to start selling insurance for AFLAC when the headaches began. My dad had been a salesman almost his entire adult life, starting with fertilizer in the 1970's, to nuts and bolts, then tires, and finally insurance for AFLAC and he loved every second of being on the road because he got to work with people. The biggest thing that affected my dad was not that he had the tumor, it was that he wouldn't be on the road anymore, doing what he loved and i know to this day, almost 7 1/2 years later, this still kills him.

One day in early June, 2003 my dad had a meeting with an AFLAC sales representative to learn what he had to do to also become a representative for AFLAC, and when he got home he was having one of the headaches, but this one was more severe than any of the previous ones, it was so painful that he couldn't even get out of his truck without my mother's and sister's assistance. This headache was the last straw, my sister rushed me to my aunt and uncle's house, where I would spend the rest of the weekend and my mom rushed my dad to Carle hospital in Champaign, Illinois, where he would spend the rest of the weekend. This all happened on a Friday in early June, 2003.

Once at Carle my dad was given an MRI and several other scans to detect what was causing the headaches. When they did this the detected swelling in his brain, but they couldn't tell if it was a hemorrhage or a tumor, but after a few days of observation and a few more tests they learned it was a brain tumor the size of an egg on the left side of his head, near his temple. On the Monday after he was admitted at Carle my dad was released and told that they would do everything they could to combat the tumor and that it was operable, but they needed to operate as soon as possible. So, they operated less than one month later.

Dr. Schapiro, my dad's brain surgeon is one of the best in his profession, and I remember thinking how cool it was that he would be the one to save my dad's life. My dad during this whole process, wouldn't let me forget that, that's what he was going to do, save my dad's life. Looking back that was a ridiculous expectation but that's how my dad was/ is, he's an optimist and probably will be until the day he dies.

What I learned from this was that things change extremely fast and you never know what to expect, my dad in less than two months went from being a normal, happy, forty-eight year old salesman to a permanent patient and retiree.