Nearly paralyzed with fear, I try again and again to recapture my disappearing right hand. But once it enters that part of my visual field, it’s gone. It’s like a freaky magic trick, mesmerizing, frightening, and totally inexplicable—except . . .
Brain tumor.
I immediately try to push the thought from my mind.
No, I think. That can’t be it. This cannot be happening.
I was sure that I beat stage 3 breast cancer in 2009 and stage 1B melanoma three years ago. But breast cancer and melanoma often metastasize to the brain. I know that a brain tumor in the occipital lobe, the area at the back of the brain that controls vision, is the most likely explanation for this bizarre vision loss. And I know that any brain tumor indicating metastasis—the spread of cancer cells—is horrifying news.
A brain tumor would be too cruel and too deadly, so it must be something else. Perhaps the side effect of an antibiotic I’m taking for an infection. I quickly Google doxycycline, and sure enough, vision problems and hallucinations are a side effect—very rare, but documented nonetheless.
Clearly, I tell myself, that’s the problem.
Greatly relieved, I head to the conference room where I’m meeting with a small group of visiting scientists. Once everyone has arrived, we begin to discuss our findings on how genes operate in the prefrontal cortex of patients with schizophrenia.
But I can’t focus on the presentation. Whenever I look at the projection screen or at my colleagues’ faces, parts are absent, like a surrealist painting or a puzzle with a missing piece. Although the missing section is less than a quarter of my field of vision on just one side, the void still terrifies me.
It feels like there’s a hole in my mind. With a terrible gravity, it pulls me back toward the one explanation I don’t want to consider:
Brain tumor.
I desperately try to pretend I’m participating in the meeting. But the idea has become stuck in my head: Brain tumor. Brain tumor. Brain tumor.
After an hour of torture, I abruptly leave the conference room and run back to my office. I sit at my desk for a while, leaning my forehead against its cool surface as I try to process this bizarre situation. But although I turn it over and over, inspecting it from every possible angle, this symptom has only a single likely explanation—the one that frightens me most.
I have to get out of here. I have to go home. I run to the parking garage, find my car, and drive fast to Annandale, my heart racing the entire way.
At home, my skis and helmet are ready, and my suitcases are packed. I throw a last glance at my notes and piles of conference materials, making sure I have everything I need. Early tomorrow, I fly to Big Sky, Montana, to the annual Winter Conference on Brain Research. As the elected president of the conference this year, I’ve been key in organizing the meeting, which will draw five hundred neuroscientists from all over the world. I’m also giving the welcoming address to the group, and I have carefully prepared my speech.
I’ve attended this meeting every year for the past twenty-four years. With its balance of work and outdoor fun, it’s my favorite conference. Early each morning, we attend sessions on topics related to brain function, mental illness, and drug addiction. We break for several hours to hit the ski slopes, chatting with our colleagues about our research as we ride the chairlifts up the mountain. Midafternoon, we reconvene for professional sessions and often work together late into the night.
I’m particularly excited this year because my son, Witek, will be at the conference. He and I will work together, then go skiing with Cheyenne. The forecast is excellent—snow for the next five days—and I can’t wait to hit the trails. I can almost smell the frosty air and feel the bite of freezing wind on my face as I speed down the slopes, zigzagging through the trees and kicking up blinding clouds of snow.
I love skiing even more than science. It gives me the feeling of weightlessness, an extraordinary lightness of being, a sense of freedom as I fly in and out of control. It’s challenging and risky. Navigating the tight trees on a fast run or jumping off the rocks into the white nothingness requires instantaneous decision-making and trust in one’s agile body, sharp vision, and strong muscles. And the beauty of the surroundings! Skyscraping mountains over and around me, glittering snow under my feet—the sweet, sweet feeling of paradise.
But this problem with my eyesight weighs heavily on me. I still can’t see anything that wanders into the lower-right quadrant of my field of vision.
I try to squelch the panic that is growing inside of me. I just can’t accept that this weird phenomenon is serious enough to keep me from Montana. It simply must not be the one thing I’ve suspected from the moment my hand disappeared this morning, the absolute worst possibility. I won’t even let the word tumor emerge from my mouth.
But on some barely conscious level, I know my situation may be dangerous. I have to act, and quickly. I call our family doctor, Eugene Shmorhun, and ask for a last-minute appointment. It’s late afternoon and near the end of his office hours, but he agrees to see me immediately. I don’t tell Mirek or anyone else where I’m going, not wanting to alarm them—and not wanting to admit the terrible possibility even to myself.
Dr. Shmorhun has been our family doctor for almost twenty-six years, since we first moved here from Poland. When we became his patients, he was young, tall, and handsome, just starting his private practice. Over the decades we’ve all aged together, witnessing one another’s skin sag a little
