While its obvious that brain tumours aren't
cool, there are many parts to a brain tumor and the subsequent removal that people don't understand.
The first and worst part is the hospital stay. This is the only part I'll bother complaining about.
When you wake up, they might have a breathing tube down your throat because they aren't sure that you can breath on your own. Its a very scary feeling when you don't get to control your breathing and you can't tell anyone to take the breathing tube out.
In my case, because my tumor was in the back of my head, they had to split my back neck muscles to get to the skull. Because of this, these muscles decided they didn't want to work.
Since you've just had brain surgery, you've probably be under anesthesia for 8 hours or more, your body has decided to shut down. When you wake up, your body doesn't want food coming in or going out. Another nice side effect of all those chemicals in your body is that when you try to go to sleep, your whole body goes numb, which thereby makes it impossible; you have to fall alseep due to sheer exhaustion.
IVs and needles are also a big part of being in the hospital. IVs suck because they are constantly in your arm/hand/etc so every time you move that part of the body you feel the IV in your blood vein. The IVs are also notable that when they give you medicine that is on drip, and the medicine has been stored cold, your entire body temperature will drop as it is administered. Its really not a pleasent feeling at 11pm. Then you have needles; used for drawing blood or giving smaller doses of medicine. They have to give you this anti-coagulent every day, but the bad thing is they give it to you in your stomach, and due to the nature of it, it causes what appear to be bruises.
Another interesting thing about my prediciment was that I had to have a tap to relieve the ICP ( Inter Cranial Pressure ) that built up due to cranial fluid not being absorbed like it should ( another fun consequnce of those drugs..). Because of this tap, I was constantly afriad of pulling it out of my head, and thereby killing myself.
Walking is another thing you take for granted: after such a short amount of time, your body seemly forgets how to do it. You feel like a toddler must, except it is a lot farther to the floor.
Couple all this with being couped in a place that is no larger than your average bedroom for 2 weeks, with no computer and a TV that only gets ABC,CBS,NBC, Weather Channel, CNN and Cartoon Network.
After reading this, a fraction of an idea of why brain tumors suck, may truly be possible.
Well, at least the food didn't suck.