FEBRUARY 8TH, 2018

I wish I was writing from home, sitting on a comfortable armchair next to the window, watching snowflakes fall and cover the landscape. I would be using an old pen and, as always, blue ink would be running over the paper, forming small rivers of dark water snaking between the letters I would have written in this short paragraph. I wish I could experience the aging of my own hands holding a pen, trembling more and more after each year; thin paper skin hands.

I used to be independent, able of handling my own life. I used to be on my own, not needing anybody else, fearless in front of a wide world that didn’t have limits for me. I was capable of anything; obstacles were just stumbling blocks I needed to sort to keep going. Everything was a challenge, and I was willing to face them all.

A daughter, a sister, a friend, a writer, a painter, a thinker, a swimmer, a student, a worker, a singer, a musician: I was it all. I was talented, life had gifted me with all these qualities, and I worked to improve them all.

When did it all change? I have and exact date to answer to this question, although it probably started much earlier. Maybe it was when I was living in Tenerife, back in 2013, that time I had to walk about two hours back and forth under the August canary sun to reach a doctor who could take and ear wax from my ear. Or in Canada, in 2015, when I visited different doctors for the same reason. Or back in 2016, when I was living in Seattle and had to pay more than $400 for the same medical procedure. And I will always remember the confusing January 15^th, 2017, when after picking up my medical results, I read I had an acoustic neuroma. Or the same day, when my doctor said to me: “You mustn’t underestimate this tumour for being benign. This surgery is going to change your life”.

But the date my new life started was February 8^th, 2018, the day I entered an operation room to be taken out more than ten hours later, thought to be in the verge of life and death.  

It impacts me to think that only ten hours were enough to turn my whole life upside down. From being a talented young woman, I went back to having to learn how to speak or to walk again, I lost the capability of manually writing, I experienced numbness on the right side of my body, hearing and visual loss. It was not only the surgery but all it came after that. We shouldn’t expend so much time worrying for something we can do little about and focus in understanding that thing may change from the moment on.

Some people may think the changes I had to face were not much, but they have totally affected my daily life. I left my job, the apartment I was sharing in Barcelona, I went back to live with my parents. I lost friends who couldn’t face to think I was the same person they had met years before, I had to adapt all my moves to my balance difficulties, change the way I kept conversations in order to hear people well.

But I haven’t surrendered, not yet at least. I keep fighting, I want to improve. I have always aimed for triumph, the word that I would use to describe my way of facing life. To make my dreams become a reality, to success in those things I can and like to do, to make the best of my relationships, to not keep a sensation of regret or lost. Triumph, a beautiful word that some people misunderstand, relating its significance with selfishness, egocentricity and greed, and mixing it with concepts like money or simple victory. I am not talking about this though; I go much and much further.     

That is why what I am facing right now is so difficult. I am experiencing hearing loss again, this time coming from the other ear. Doctors haven’t found a logical explanation to this yet, and I am already fearing the worst. In front of the unanswered questions of my doctors, I have recurred to Google. I know Google is probably the worst tool to recur to in this kind of situations, but what else can I do? I am a natural searcher; I don’t like having no answers. But, as it usually happens, I don’t like the answer I have found.

Neurofibromatosis type 2, “a tumour-prone disorder characterized by the development of multiple schwannomas and meningiomas”. And I have already had one developed.

I cannot help fearing that this may be the answer to everything that has happened to me before and after February 8^th, 2018. And I can’t stop the thought that, if this is it, I will probably lose the 100% of my hearing. To not talk about the reduced possibilities of my long-term survival.

If I think I have already had to change a lot in my life, I cannot yet conceive the fact of losing the totality of my hearing. That would mean dropping the journalism degree I have just started, not being able to enjoy music again, loosing even more people around me for not being able to communicate.

I look at my fingers, typing fast these words, flying through my laptop’s keyboard. And I see now I wish too many things. I wish I could write as I did before, hear everything as I used to, see the world without getting every image duplicated. I wish I could play sports like anybody else, walk without watching every step I made, not have my right arm shaking every now and then for no reason.

But now, I wish everything stays as it is, all these obstacles already integrated in my life, no to face any other unwelcomed change. Not to get a new diagnose.