“It’s not brain surgery, after all.”

I love it when people say that something is or is not “brain surgery.” Because I know a little something about it, and, as a consequence, I feel uniquely qualified to make such an assessment.

I recently learned that I’m not the only one with these qualifications. That revelation, and a friend’s recent post about peace and death, have had me thinking about all of this again. So here goes:

Eleven years ago I was a 26 year-old lawyer working in New York City. I took a late lunch one Tuesday afternoon and met up with an assistant district attorney I’d been dating in the Astoria section of Queens. After a very pleasant lunch, he began walking me back to the subway.

And then I collapsed, unconscious, on the street. When I awoke in the ambulance, my date explained that I’d had a “little seizure,” but that I was not to worry. He would stay with me for as long as I needed, and – he was sure – we’d soon get the answers to the questions that were written all over my face.

Except the answers weren’t what I hoped. In the coming days, two very competent neurosurgeons at two of the best hospitals in Manhattan made the same pronouncement: I was afflicted with a rather nasty Arteriovenous Malformation (“AVM”), and – unless I allowed one or the other of them go rooting around in my cranium – I was likely going to die.

In the movies, this is the point in the story when everybody breaks down crying. There’s a lot of hugging, and a fair bit of hysteria ensues. This is especially true when the story concerns ethnic types, such as my own Italian-American family. But this wasn’t the movies, and there wasn’t any hysteria. I just listened to what each of the surgeons said and, after I’d digested the concurring opinion at Mount Sinai hospital, I decided to allow them to go ahead and give it a try.

The doc at Mount Sinai made no guarantees; he was hopeful, but he was also careful to advise that the surgery itself was risky, and that I might suffer long-term consequences. I heard him, except that the whole time he was talking, I was quietly peering over at my mother. She looked more terrified than I’d ever seen her, and I knew why: the thought of losing a daughter before her fiftieth birthday was simply incomprehensible. So I just said yes. As in: get it the fuck out of my head -- now!

In the week between the diagnosis and the surgery, I made my peace with the universe and settled my affairs. I also cleaned up my office, and disposed of anything I didn’t want found in the event I had my ticket punched. Then, just in case, I bought some scarves to cover my head if I lived and was able to work.

As is so often the case, the cure was a bit worse than the disease. My brain swelled after the surgery, and I lost the ability to speak and/or comprehend language for several interminable days. It was a little frustrating. I was also abused by a nurse in the Neuro-ICU, but was unable to speak or write to tell anyone about it.

And, once that passed, I got the news that – oops! – it wasn’t a potentially-fatal AVM at all, but a more benign condition known as a Cavernous Hemangioma. And the topper: the CA was nestled so deeply in my brain that the surgeons had been unable to remove it during the seven-hour procedure. Back, as they say, to square one.

So there I was, eleven days in the hospital, half-bald, looking like the Bride of Frankenstein, and so fucking grateful for my situation that – if I’d been able to speak English – I would have shouted from the rooftops. Because, in the end, I’m still here. And, even with the occasional “hello” I get from The Thing in My Head, life is still pretty good. I’m fond of reminding myself, “Other people live with so much worse.” And I mean it every single time.

Even if what happened to me was exactly like brain surgery.