World Brain Tumor Day is observed on June 8 every year to raise awareness and educate people about brain tumors
You thought it was a normal headache the first time you felt it. So, you cursed Lagos traffic, your horrible boss, even the presidential candidate who failed to rig the election. If he had rigged and won, there wouldn’t be so much traffic on the Lekki-Epe Expressway because there would have been cable cars, bicycles, or motorized scooters on sidewalks. You wouldn’t have to work for a company that paid stipends to a data analyst with experience like yours.
As you gritted your teeth and massaged your temples, you promised to get a stronger painkiller, to close from work earlier, and to send in a new application for residency in Canada.
The next time it happened, your colleague with the snaggletooth insisted, with that Nigerian know-it-all manner, that it must be a migraine. Then she went on to tell you about a cousin who had lived with one for years. Migraine doesn’t cause slurred speeches. You didn’t tell her that though.
The time after that was when you blacked out just moments after Havertz scored the goal that placed Arsenal at the zenith of the Premier League. The last thing you remembered was jumping up. Did you fist the air or hug someone at the viewing centre before the blackness swallowed you? You cannot remember.
When you woke up, you didn’t know who had randomly suggested an MRI. But you went the next day to a lab on the mainland, your heart thudding furiously, your palms clammy as they always were whenever you were anxious.
“Brain tumor,” the test result screamed, and regardless of what the doctor said, all you heard was white noise.
The days that followed went by in a blur — words like surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy began to feature in your vocabulary.
But it was characterized by.
Those smells you hated: drugs, the antiseptic smell of the hospital room, the chemical smell in your urine and excrement. The tastes: the powdery taste on your tongue, the loss of taste for food — even pounded yam and afang, your favorite. The feelings: the lightness as though your bones had been hollowed out, the nausea. Your life became like someone else’s. Like a character in a movie.
As you lie in bed, in this moment of lucidity, you wonder how fast life can change. One moment you were thinking of meeting your KPIs and targets, thinking of traveling to Canada, away from Nigeria and its lack of opportunities. Now your target is seeing the next day, how you measure your KPIs is in how you overcome the next medical milestone or how things have turned the corner. You now know how things can assume new meanings.
You no longer see cancer as an ailment for the old or bedrest for the lazy. Gratitude has become a lifestyle. You are now grateful for everything — the nurse who plays TikTok videos at night, even her noisy company is company; the doctor who spends time telling you about Arsenal Football Club’s losses; and most importantly, the person who first set apart a day for remembering the invisible brain tumor victims.
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