So you just found out you have a brain tumor. A million thoughts are probably racing through your head and however you feel is perfectly normal. Finding out I had one was one of the scariest and most shocking moments of my life. You’ll might even channel your hurt towards other people because you don’t know how to react. No matter how scared you feel just remember you’re a lot braver and tougher than you think.

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After coming home, I avoided everyone. I didn’t go to the library or anywhere I would be asked “are you ok?” “what’s wrong?”. I couldn’t pretend everything was ok while I was trying to process everything and thinking “do I have cancer?”. People knew I had been in the hospital but very few knew the full reason. The first person to know why was my boyfriend who got a text saying “Hey babe I had a seizure on the way back from the beached had to be sent to the emergency room”. I had to wait a while to tell him what they found because I didn’t want to do it over text. It wouldn’t exactly be the best way to tell someone that news.

So for over a week, I held in this secret that only my family knew about while we went to the doctors and searched for answers. Making sure it was not another form of cancer that had gone to the brain, the neurologist sent us to the several different doctors including a dermatologist and eye doctor to test for melanoma or something unusual and ordered a CT scan of my abdomen to test for anymore tumors. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because one of the spots the dermatologist ended up removing turned out to be pre-melanoma. Something we would not have none if I had not had the seizure.

Thankfully, they did not find any tumors in my abdomen but they did find out that my kidney was being constricted by 70-80%. At the time, we could only focus on finding out what my brain tumor meant but later found out it meant that I had something called a nutcracker syndrome.

After my seizure, I was terrified of it happening again. To be honest, I’m still terrified of it happening. I moved back home for a bit and was constantly watched by my family. I was scared of what the future had to hold. The seizure made me feel like my body had just been run over by a truck. I had a hard time walking after it because I could had trouble moving my left side. During Spring break, I spent most of the time on the couch sleeping cause my body was so worn out.

Pretty soon, I ended up having to go to a neurosurgeon to get another opinion. After getting another MRI of my brain, it was determined that I had something called an angioma. For over two years, I had been getting horrible migraines that were getting more frequent. It turned out that what I was experiencing was my brain bleeding a little bit that gave me migraine like symptoms. The day I had the seizure I drank a beer, which can thin your blood, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was probably the catalyst for the events of that day. My seizure was bound to happen one day but that’s what I feel caused it to happen sooner. Even though it was extremely scary, I’m forever thankful that I wasn’t driving and my family was there to get me help.

So I know how terrible it is to be told you have a brain tumor. You feel like your life is spiraling out of control. People tell you how much they understand the hurt you’re in but they can’t unless they’ve dealt with it themselves. If someone you know just found out they have a brain tumor, the best you can do is to be there for them and show your support in any way you can. Don’t tell them you understand or that you know what they’re going through because you can’t. Not unless you’ve gone through it yourself.

After I came to grips with the fact that I had a brain tumor, I had another thing to seriously consider: brain surgery.

Read Part 3 for more on why I decided to have brain surgery.