Transcript for the Piece Audio version of My Sister's Brain Cancer

I call my sister every day.

Sometimes I wake her up from a nap. She asks how I?m doing. I tell her what I?m cooking, how our daughters are making a new iMovie, about the plans for our son?s graduation party, how my job search is going.

I ask her how SHE is. She usually laughs a little: ?Oh, I?m okay.?

She has a grade four malignant brain tumor in the front lobe of her brain. The brain surgeon who opened her head up and tried to take out as much of the tumor as possible said that my sister?s ability to process emotion was limited now that the tumor had a hold on her brain.

That?s a pretty big side-effect.

Last year after the shock of finding out that she had brain cancer and after the many days in the hospital following her first brain surgery, after we got worse and worse news from the doctors, when it was finally time to take her home, I went into her hospital room to help her get her coat on so I could take her home to her husband and her one month old baby and her two year old son.

Her glasses were tilted on her face. Her head was shaved and her incision was wired closed across the top of her head. She smiled at me and said ?Woo HOO!! We?re goin? HOME!?

My sister is enthusiastic. She answers the phone ?hel-LO!? She laughs still, but you get the sense that before she?s done laughing she?s forgotten what the joke was.

Before her brain tumor, she used to get crabby with me, and we used to fight and hurt each other?s feelings and then have intricate talks to get back on track. We used to laugh until we almost wet our pants and then swear that we wouldn?t tell anyone what we?d been laughing about.

She doesn?t have access to those kinds of emotions now. It?s just steady as she goes. She?s vague, unfocused, forgetful.

And this is the hard part. Is it true that the way we truly know someone is by the way their brain works? And when it doesn?t work the way it used to, where?s the person?

Where?s my sister?

I heard Ted Kennedy?s brain tumor being called ?a tumor of the mind.?

My sister. Her mind. Her self.

It all began with severe headaches during her second pregnancy. ?Oh I had lots of headaches with each of my pregnancies,? I reassured her. Then there was the headache that made her vomit. She left her newborn and her toddler and her husband all sleeping in the house and drove herself to the emergency room.

She?s had eleven rounds of chemotherapy. She?s had two brain surgeries. It?s too dangerous to cut the tumor out. The surgeon can?t cross what she calls ?the blood-brain barrier? because it would turn my sister into a vegetable.

?What kind of vegetable?? my sister jokes.

My three teenagers and I take care of my sister?s kids a lot of the weekends. My little niece and nephew love their big cousins.

The baby has learned to walk. The preschooler washes dishes at our sink, standing on a chair, pouring water from bowl to cup to bowl.

Later, when they?re tucked into bed, I call my sister to tell her that her kids are sleeping and that they had a good day.

?Oh, that?s GOOD.? she says.

I can?t tell her how afraid I am. If she does feel an edge of my terror, she can?t interpret it. The room in her brain where terror lived is closed to her now.

I have a strange instinct to call her back again and say ?Sweetie, you won?t believe this, but you have brain cancer.?

As if she?d suddenly snap back to her old self and I?d rush over and we?d sit on the couch and try to figure out how to talk about it with Mom and what we think our brother will say and what we should do next. And we could cry and cry and cry together.

I miss her.

Back