Page 82 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

However, when the middle-aged man with a kind smile on his face entered the room, introduced himself, and shook my hand, I felt at ease almost immediately. It could have been the fact that he had a funky, multi-colored lab coat on over his puke green scrubs. Or it could have been that he went by his first name instead of his last with his patients. Whatever it was, I realized that I would feel comfortable giving this man thirty minutes of my time.

“Pardon me?” I asked.

“How many times have they cut your skull open?” he asked, his fingers digging through my hair.

Other than Peter, I had never liked for people to play with my hair. Because then they would see the network of scars that zig-zag along the top and side of my scalp. It’s one of the reasons I like to keep my hair longer than I should. Hair hides the evidence of that which I’m ashamed, though the shame is not of my doing.

“Um,” I said, mumbling, “I’m not certain.”

“Why did they go in through your skull instead of up your nose?”

“I…don’t know,” I said. “I think they went through my nose once. I think. Most of my surgeries were done when I was very young.”

He sighed and continued tracing my scars with his fingertips as he picked through my hair. For what seemed like forever, Dr. Bradley obsessed over the scars. I was on the verge of either shoving him away or simply, yet firmly, asking him to stop. There was nothing on my scalp that would change the more he looked at it. Before I had a chance, Dr. Bradley sighed again and stepped back to look at me.

He started to speak, stopped himself, and walked over to retrieve the little stool on wheels that all doctors keep in examination rooms. Sitting down, he wheeled himself over until he was a few feet away, nearly eye-level with me since the table I was sitting upon had been built for shorter patients.

“What you have is a meningioma, Enzo,” Dr. Bradley said. “Which isn’t technically a tumor, but they get classified that way.”

“You can tell from my scars?”

He laughed. “No. I’ve studied the medical records your doctors forwarded to me.”

“Okay,” I shrugged.

“That’s why I took an interest in you, Enzo. The fact that you’ve had a meningioma since you were a child.”

“A baby,” I said. “I’ve had it my whole life. I think.”

He nodded, unconcerned.

“Meningiomas in children make up five percent or less of all meningiomas,” he said. “It’s super rare.”

“Yay,” I said, giving jazz hands.

Dr. Bradley laughed.

“They’re almost always benign—as you know—and often present no symptoms. Many people with meningioma simply need to be monitored once a year to make sure nothing changes and they live normal lives,” he said. “Meningiomas tend to grow—very slowly usually—but they do grow, and can present problems further on in life. If they start growing too much, they can press on parts of the brain and cause seizures—”

We exchanged a pointed look.

“—they can lead to dementia, headaches, other neurologic symptoms…you get the idea.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Since you’ve had this since you were born, it’s particularly interesting to me since all of my patients are children. The fact that yours has grown hardly at all since then—if at all—is also interesting. Medication usually isn’t used to treat patients with a meningioma, but I suppose if you want to try and control seizures, that is one way to go about it.”

“Okay?”

“It’s also interesting to me because you’re one of the patients with meningioma who is not asymptomatic, so treatment through surgery would be ideal.”

I tapped my head. “And they’ve tried. They failed. I take medication.”

He nodded. “What’s confusing to me is that from the scans I’ve seen and notes I’ve read, yours is a meningioma that should have been easily solved through surgery. How they’ve failed time and time again, is infuriating to me, considering what I’ve read in your medical history compiled from all of your doctors. The French ones took some deciphering.”

We both chuckled.

With nothing useful to help Dr. Bradley figure out the puzzle that was my tumor, I stayed silent.