It was a sunny spring day in Iowa and I just returned to my office from lunch with a business colleague when my phone rang.

The voice on the other end was my ENT surgeon who I had scheduled sinus surgery with three days earlier.

“Greg, this is Dr. Smit.  I need to talk to you about your CT scan you had on Friday.”
My heart skipped about 5 beats and I felt the blood rush to my feet.

“OK”,  I said.

“There is a meningioma showing up on your CT scan”, he told me.

My mind was racing.  I grabbed for something to write with and write on.  “A what?” I asked.

“It is a growth originating from the lining of your brain.  As it grows it is putting pressure on your brain” he went on.  “You will need to get this addressed before we can go ahead with the sinus surgery.”

“OK”, I said.  “Now what did you say?  How do you spell it?  What is it again?”  I was speechless.

“A ‘me….nen……gee….oo…..ma'” he said slowly and phonetically to me.

Dr. Smit then reviewed what he said again with me and said he would be referring me to a neuro-surgeon as the meningioma, in his opinion, would need to be removed.

He went on tell me it was on my left frontal lobe and was approximately 2 cm at its widest point.  The words tumor and meningioma where used interchangeably with each other a few times.

I kept waiting to wake up with my head hitting the pillow like when you are having one of those dreams when you are falling.

“This is a joke, right?  Who is this really?”  I asked – hoping he would say it was really one of my friends playing a cruel, but clever practical joke on me.

“This is no joke – I wish it was.” he replied.   Those words snapped me into reality.
I remember glancing at the clock – it said 12:47 PM.