It's A Good Sign, I Think

It’s been a few days now, a week almost, and my mind still boggles.

The kidlets, now almost 3 and almost 5, had a rough time with this whole meningioma mess, given that I was pretty much out of commission for a while and on top of it, they ended up getting shipped off to their grandparents for that first horrible month post-craniotomy.

The older one went back to normal pretty quickly after things had returned to a more normal state at home, but it was the little one, barely one year old at the time, who had a hard time with it. It took him more than a year before he felt pretty comfortable around me at least most of the time and allowing his grandmother, the one person who looked after him most in the time immediately after my surgery, to even look at him, let alone speak to him or touch him. Given his age at the time this all happened, this is not surprising – after all, he couldn’t express himself all that well yet, what with him obsessively shouting “Gack... gack, gack, gack!! Gack ... gaaaack!” at the time, and not having the cognitive abilities to really understand what was going on.

Or so we thought.

‘Cause the other day, during a diaper change, he said to me,

“You were sick, Mama! You had something in your head!”

I almost keeled over.

I haven’t been sick recently, haven’t even had a headache for the last few months or anything worse than a little cold, so we’re pretty sure he was talking about that horrible summer of 2008. But is this really possible? He had turned 1 mere days before I was diagnosed and it’s been 18 months since I had surgery. Can he remember that far back? Did he understand what was going on or is he able to piece things together now, now at almost 3? It’s not like we talk about meningiomas and craniotomies constantly. And it’s not like we’ve had to make permanent changes to accommodate any deficits or anything. We’ve gone back to living our lives pretty much like we would have had this mess never happened to us.

So I don’t know.

Part of me, a big part of me, thinks that he really was talking about me having been sick and that he’s just taken another big step in his own recovery process. After all, this was rough on all of us, but maybe particularly him. Nursing had to come to a rather abrupt halt since I was put on meds. I spent my days in a dark and quiet room, constantly having bad headaches and oftentimes didn’t even have the energy to eat with the rest of the family, let alone play with the kids. He had to “take a vacation” in the country side at his grandparents’ house and, of course, wouldn’t have understood any of it. Yes, he had his sister with him, but still – it was hard enough for her to understand (at just 3 years old), so I can’t even imagine what the little guy had to go through. It wouldn’t be surprising for him to still feel a bit out of whack about it all – but to say something so clearly??

However, even though we’d been thinking that everything was back to normal with him, over the last couple of weeks he’s clearly become much more attached to me. I’m a bit worried about always connecting everything back to the meningioma, and decided to just be happy about it, without trying to read anything into it. But maybe I should – maybe something was still amiss and he’s just taken another big step? His behaviour toward me has changed in subtle, yet noticeable ways, all of them good, and he is older now and much better at articulating what’s going on. So yes, maybe he is still getting over it – it’s not like I never think about it anymore either, or get freaked out by it, so it makes sense that those closest to me are also still grappling with it.

His sister also still asks questions about it, though with decreasing frequency. She had become more attached to me through all of this, and for the first few months after surgery never left me alone anymore and developed into a little stalker. Pretty quickly, however, things went back to normal for her. So whenever the topic came up, she’s been happy enough to make fun of the big meatball she thought had grown in my head and give me pretend MRIs – and then went back to doing whatever she was doing.

The other day though, we The Husband and I were talking about the little Punk’s comment, it got her thinking about it all again, too. And this time, it was different. She asked much more serious questions and really wanted to know what had happened.

So.

Now she knows that they cut a hole in my head, and not just a little one, but actually took out my entire forehead. That they put their instruments in there and cut out the brain tumour (as opposed to the meatball). She asked for my doctor’s name. And then I let her touch some of the screws you can feel through my scalp. She didn’t get obviously freaked out by any of this, rather was quite interested in the whole thing. It became clear, however, that she’s still quite relieved it’s over as at the end of this little dinner table conversation, she gave me a big hug and said that she’s so happy to be living with us again.

I’m still blown away by both of them. They are so young and should not ever really have to know about this sort of thing, at least not from so close, but here they are, still dealing with it all more than 18 months later.

I love my kids. And I hope, hope, that they are okay!