It’s midnight and I’m convinced I’ll be dead of a brain tumor by first light.
How I even know about brain tumors is a mystery. I’m six years old and no one in my small world has ever had one. Still, I’m panicking, gulping at the air, trembling beneath the covers.My mother tries to hold me and talk me down, but I’m too far gone to be comforted. Finally, near tears herself, she phones an old family friend who happens to be a world-famous neurosurgeon. Fifteen minutes later he shows up at our house and puts me through the paces of basic neurology tests—close your eyes and touch the tip of your forefinger to the tip of your nose, walk heel to toe in a straight line across the room—then he promises me I don’t have a brain tumor. I believe him—for now.
The Brain Tumor Episode was not the first—or last—time I believed I was at risk of imminent death. Worries over nuclear war, fire, kidnapping, and tse-tse flies had all come before. In college, I found my way more than once to the emergency room, certain I was dying of an MI. (I was up on the lingo…
