Every year, Facebook reminds me of the day my brain announced that I had an “82-month-old lover.” Yes, that sounds considerably worse than an 82-year-old lover. No, I did not have one of either age. It began with a phone call from my daughter Brittany. “Mom, did you read what you wrote on Facebook?” I went back and read it—and cracked up.

The post made very little sense, but it was so spectacularly wrong that I couldn’t bring myself to erase it.

“I’m leaving it,” I told her. And I did. Now I repost it every year because it still makes me laugh.

On July 20, I was transferred from a small hospital to a larger one in Oklahoma City. They ran tests on July 21, and on July 22, Dr. Michael Hahn performed a craniotomy and removed as much of the tumor as he safely could. My oncologist had already told my daughter Nicole that it looked like cancer and appeared malignant, but we would not know exactly what it was until the pathology report arrived a week or two later. I didn’t understand then how unusual my path to diagnosis was. Most people I have met with primary central nervous system lymphoma talk about having a needle biopsy. I went directly into brain surgery. Years later, I still wonder why—and whether my medical records might finally explain the decision.

When I woke after the craniotomy, I knew Dr. Hahn had been fishing inside my head. Not suspected. Knew. I kept asking whether he had gotten all the fish out. The idea made perfect sense to me, even though everyone around me knew that no fishing expedition had taken place in the operating room. Because of COVID, we had been living at the lake, where fishing had become part of my everyday life. Apparently, my recovering brain reached for something familiar to explain the unimaginable: a surgeon had opened my skull and removed something that did not belong there. Brain surgery became fishing—and I desperately wanted to know whether he had caught everything.

The Fisher King in a Tutu

Later, I told Dr. Hahn that he was the Fisher King. He turned around and sang every word of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady.”

In my head, however, he was wearing a tutu.

My brain had blended two characters from the movie The Fisher King: Michael Jeter’s flamboyant cabaret singer, who arrives at Lydia’s workplace in costume to announce that she has won a prize, and Robin Williams’s character, who sings “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” later in the movie.

So my recovering brain produced its own version: my neurosurgeon, dressed in a tutu, singing about Lydia after fishing around inside my head. My brain may have been damaged, but its casting department was magnificent.

I had dyslexia before I had brain cancer, and then the cancer landed in the part of my brain involved in processing and communication. I often knew what I wanted to say, but somewhere between the thought and the words, things went sideways.

That Facebook post captured one of those moments. “Prices for my husband.” “My27 laws.” An “82-month-old lover.” And, of course, the unforgettable “his dick near me.” The words were mine, but the combinations were not.

What I meant was my 82-year-old mother, my in-laws, and prayers for my husband. I can almost trace how those thoughts became an “82-month-old lover,” “my27 laws,” and “prices for my husband.” But God only knows where the dick came from.

Looking back, I can see both the fear and the absurdity. My brain was injured, confused, and working desperately to reconnect—but it never completely lost its sense of humor.

Beneath all the scrambled language, one thought came through clearly: “Above all I’m asking for some time and a miracle.”

I got both.