Personal Transformation Magazine — May 1998

The Mystery

by Bill Asenjo

It appeared suddenly. Blackness blotted out my vision. A moment before, I'd focused on the cards that I held. Now I was blind.

Then — like a puppet with its strings cut — I slumped over the table paralyzed. Time stopped.

"Call 911!" a poker player shouted.

Stunned, a resigned bitterness took over. "So this is how it happens. I'm having a stroke, I'm dying."

A siren approached.

Examining my brain scan, the emergency room neurosurgeon announced gravely, "Well, you didn't have a stroke, but you do have a brain tumor ‐ bigger than a golf ball."

I heard his words, but couldn't comprehend their meaning. I only wanted to return to the game so I could finish the hand that I'd been dealt.

In a way, I was.

There were more surprises. Surgeons removed skull and began probing. My brain swelled.

I awoke in intensive care with a garden hose down my throat. It breathed for me.

To allow for swelling, a section of skull had not been replaced. I felt like I had an ax buried in my head.

"Bill," the neurosurgeon explained, "we're not sure what happened; we had to stop. I know you're hurting, but we can't give you anything. It might cause more swelling, and that could be fatal. I'll check on you again later."

I didn't care if medication DID kill me. I'd never imagined such pain. Whimpering like a puppy, I gagged on the thick tube reaching down my throat. It would be a long night.

By morning the swelling subsided. They began again. The first operation preceded five more. Some vision returned, but only hazy shapes. Shaved bald, Frankenstein scars stretched from the nape of my neck to the top of my head.

Between surgeries, spinal meningitis mugged me. Like the tumor, it took over suddenly. I was too exhausted to be afraid. Paralyzed, my speech slurred. I drooled.

Indignant to the surgical intrusions, my brain short-circuited. I had seizures. Medication made me spastic. I jerked uncontrollably like a broken wind-up toy.

Completely helpless, having long ago dismissed the God of my childhood, I felt utterly alone. As far as I was concerned, my life was over.

I began vomiting. Without warning, my last meal would shoot out of me like a scene from The Exorcist.Mysterious pains struck randomly as if some alien beast were trying to exit my body.

The tumor blocked a passage connecting my brain and spinal cord. Spinal fluid seeped into my skull, but couldn't drain. Trapped in my skull, fluid crushed my brain. The strange pains and vomiting were alarms.

The next morning, a man with a knitting needle on a small tray awakened me. He had come to do a spinal tap.

Spinal taps siphoned fluid, relieving pressure. For weeks, while gaining strength for the next surgery, a man with a knitting needle on a tray awakened me each dawn.

Seasons changed. I progressed from bedridden, to wheelchair, walker, and finally, a cane. Discharge day arrived. I could only think about the raw deal that Life had dealt me.

At the rehabilitation facility, no-nonsense counselors didn't indulge my self-pity. Surrounded by patients with a menu of life-threatening conditions, my thumb-sucking wasn't tolerated.

A counselor began the group session, "Bill, how are you?" I mumbled something about how Life had wronged me.

He seemed amused. "Bill, 'sympathy' is in the dictionary between 'sweat' and 'syphilis.' Now who else wants to talk?"

I was appalled.

Seated among those with life-threatening conditions, I wasn't special.

To help adjust my attitude, each day I was to list ten things for which I felt gratitude. Insisting my glass was half-empty instead of half-full, my list remained blank.

The problem, of course, was me. As long as I insisted on sucking my thumb, counselors were willing to help me choke on it.

Weeks passed, my body detoxified from months of medication. Without a chemical cushion, self-pity gave way to fear. I was afraid of the future.

Only days from discharge, I gazed through a window and mumbled "Help me," to what I did not know. There were good reasons to be afraid. Until hospitalized, dead-end jobs supported a lifestyle of immediate gratification and self-destruction.

Months later, I'd recovered sufficiently to...to what? Years before I'd failed out of a community college. Since then, I'd accomplished little.

At my sister's suggestion, I anxiously registered at a junior college while wondering if I was too damaged to cut it.

Attending school with a different attitude, but without a hangover, I enjoyed learning. The first time, college had been a bore — nothing interested me. This time, everything did.

Although I continued to heal physically, I needed help emotionally. I attended a self-help group. A counselor suggested that I also join a support group for those with life-threatening illnesses — not for me, he explained, but to help others. This kept my problems in perspective. It also gave me a chance to repay a debt — I'd asked for help; it came as a chance to help others.

I soon realized a fulfillment different from academic achievement — the more I did for others, the less I thought about me, and the better I felt about myself.

Filling out a scholarship application, I pondered "Who IS this guy?" The person I'd become bore little resemblance to the person I'd once been.

Having spent more than enough time in bars and pool halls to complete several degrees, I wondered how much credit was mine. I didn't plan to have a brain tumor, and I couldn't have arranged all that had happened since then.

A once indignant "Why me?" had become a quiet "Why me? Thank you" to a God I still didn't know. This new life excited me. An early influence was Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Awed by his triumph over years in concentration camps, I was inspired by his transcendence over pain and loss. Frankl helped me make sense of such experiences. He stated what I suspected: although we may distract ourselves, we all seek meaning. Compared to the losses Frankl endured, my experiences paled. I was humbled.

From Jung I discovered synchronicity — events connected by meaning, rather than cause and effect. He described his near death experience during a heart attack, and blended psychology with spirituality.

Expanding on Jung, the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested that the word "God" was merely a metaphor for The Mystery.

I sought ways to understand. But soon realized I would never arrive at THE answer. Walt Whitman wrote that God was a journey.

Philosopher Paul Tillich's observation that the concept of "God" was not "A Being" but rather "Being itself."

I began to notice simple things: my cut finger healing, a spider weaving its web. Was approaching this "God whose name I did not know" with a list of demands like a greedy child at Christmas, misguided? I was too limited to know. It seemed arrogant to expect to understand.

As a youth I rejected someone's dogma, one perspective. There were many: American Indians, shamans, Taoists — a buffet of beliefs. I'd assumed what I'd been taught was all there was. What would I have believed if born in another century or country?

Death seemed less intimidating after reading that some considered it simply a gateway to the next life, much life pregnancy precedes life as I knew it now. Physicists described parallel universes. A wise friend suggested "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I couldn't wait to meet others.

This journey's not been flawless. There have been detours, disappointments and lessons to be learned. Most telling were my father's death, and the end of an engagement. There will be others.

Most of the time I'm grateful for what I once took for granted, reminding myself that disappointment is re-direction.

I talk to this "God whose name I do not know." Thanking, not asking. C.S. Lewis observed that prayer changes the one who prays, not conditions.

My Grade Point Average literally doubled what it'd been years before. By graduation, I'd received a dozen scholarships and awards. The University of Florida offered a fellowship.

Had someone predicted any of this a dozen years before, I'd have questioned his sanity.

I've recently completed a PhD at the University of Iowa, on fellowship. It's been hard work, and I still wonder how I've accomplished it. But then I'm reminded, should I also take credit for my heartbeat? For being born into a caring family?

Einstein once observed that the most beautiful encounter is The Mysterious. Although it remains a mystery why I developed a brain tumor, it seems it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

© 2009 Bill Asenjo

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