The worst day of my life occurred one year ago today. A. had been admitted to hospital the night before due to a recurrence of neurological symptoms. She had surgery to remove the tumor just 14 days prior.
I don’t recall the room number, but it was the 8th floor of the University of Washington Medical Center’s Montlake Campus. I worked in that very hospital a few years prior, on the 6th floor. A resident from the neurosurgery team came in, and as he’s saying the words “atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor, or ATRT,” I’m Googling it. And I don’t even have to tap any of the search results to know that this is bad. The worst, actually. He goes on to say that ATRT is rarely found in the pituitary, and when it is, it’s nearly always pediatric patients, typically younger than 3 years of age. The surgeon himself, Dr. Patel, came in later that afternoon and shared more information, none of it good. There are no silver linings when one gets a diagnosis such as this. There is no hope. None. Sitting there, next to the love of your life, and the world is wrecked, practically immediately. A. was in shock, obviously. But me, given my medical background, I was completely aware of what was happening. And what would happen. “She’ll be gone within a year,” I remember telling myself. Over and over. The world is ending. Over and over. And the following day, December 11, she would turn 36. Her final birthday.
A year ago today, my world ended. I don’t rummage through the wreckage anymore. Somehow, it continues to pile up. Eventually, it will bury me. No more light. No more anguish. No more pain. Just gone. Disappeared. And the perfect beauty of nothingness forever. And while I don’t believe in the afterlife, you experience something like this and even the coldest nihilist will ask himself: Wouldn’t it be amazing if I saw you again?