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My Story

Bill Asenjo, M.S., CRC is a Ph.D. candidate
in the University of Iowa’s Rehabilitation Counselor Education program.
His dissertation focuses on alternative medicine and disability.

as it appeared
in the May, 1998, issue
of Personal Transformation magazine

It appeared suddenly. Blackness blotted out my vision. A moment before, I'd focused on the cards that I held. Now I was blind.

Then--like a puppet with its strings cut--I slumped over the table paralyzed. Time stopped.

"Call 911!" a poker player shouted.

Stunned, a resigned bitterness took over. "So this is how it happens. I'm havin' a stroke, and I'm dying."

A siren approached.

Examining my brain scan, the emergency room neurosurgeon announced gravely, "Well, you didn't have a stroke, but you do have a brain tumor--about the size of a golf ball."

I heard his words, but couldn't comprehend their meaning. I only wanted to return to the game so I could finish the hand that I'd been dealt.

In a way, I guess I was.

There were more surprises. Surgeons removed skull and began probing. My brain swelled.

I awoke in intensive care with a garden hose down my throat. It breathed for me.

To allow for swelling, a section of skull had not been replaced. I felt like I had an ax buried in my head.

A blurry face hovered above. "Bill," the neurosurgeon explained, "we're not sure what happened; we had to stop. I know you're hurting, but we can't give you anything. It might cause more swelling. I'll check on you again later."

I didn't care if the medication DID kill me. I'd never imagined such pain. Whimpering like a puppy, I gagged on the thick tube reaching into my chest. It would be a long night.

By morning the swelling subsided. They began again. The first operation preceded five more. Some vision returned, but only hazy shapes. Shaved bald, Frankenstein scars stretched from the nape of my neck to the top of my head.

Between surgeries, I was mugged by spinal meningitis. Like the tumor, it took over suddenly. I was too exhausted to be afraid. Paralyzed, my speech slurred. I drooled.

Indignant to the surgical intrusions, my brain short-circuited. I had seizures. Medication made me spastic. Jerking uncontrollably, I was strapped down.

Completely helpless, having long ago dismissed the God of my childhood, I felt utterly alone. As far as I was concerned, my life was over.

I began vomiting. Without warning, my last meal would shoot out of me like a scene from The Exorcist. Mysterious pains struck randomly as if some alien beast were trying to exit my body.

The tumor blocked a passage connecting my brain and spinal cord. Spinal fluid seeped into my skull, but couldn't drain. Trapped in my skull, fluid crushed my brain. The strange pains and vomiting were alarms.

The next morning, I was awakened by a man with a knitting needle on a small tray. He had come to do a spinal tap.

Spinal taps siphoned fluid, relieving pressure. For weeks, while gaining strength for the next surgery, I was awakened each morning by a man with a knitting needle on a tray.

By the sixth operation, the tumor had been removed. To relieve the continuous accumulation of spinal fluid required surgical plumbing. A tube was inserted into my brain and threaded beneath my skin; the other end was inserted into my stomach where fluid drained.

Seasons changed. I progressed from bedridden, to wheelchair, walker, and finally, a cane.

The day to leave the hospital arrived. I could only think about the raw deal that life had dealt me.

At the rehabilitation facility, no-nonsense counselors didn't indulge my self-pity. Surrounded by patients with a menu of life-threatening conditions, my thumb-sucking wasn't tolerated.

A counselor began the group session, "Bill, how are you?" I mumbled something about how life had wronged me.

He seemed amused. "Bill, 'sympathy' is in the dictionary between 'shit' and 'syphilis.' Now who else wants to talk?"

I was appalled.

Seated among those recovering from serious conditions, I wasn't special.

To help adjust my attitude, each day I was to list ten things for which I felt gratitude. Insisting my glass was half-empty instead of half-full, my list remained blank.

The problem, of course, was me. As long as I insisted on sucking on my thumb, counselors always seemed willing to help me choke on it. One later explained, "Bill, if we'd given you what you wanted, you'd have drowned in self-pity."

Weeks passed, my body detoxified from months of medication. Without a chemical cushion, self-pity gave way to fear. I was afraid of the future. I hadn't expected to live this long.

Only days from discharge, I gazed through a window and mumbled "Help me" to what I didn't know.

There were good reasons to be afraid. Until hospitalized, dead-end jobs supported a lifestyle of immediate gratification and self-destructiveness. My philosophy of life had the depth of a beer commercial.

Months later, I'd recovered sufficiently to...to what? Years before I'd failed out of a community college. Since then, I'd accomplished little.

At my sister's suggestion, I anxiously registered at a junior college while wondering if I was too damaged to cut it.

Attending school with a different attitude, but without a hangover, I enjoyed learning. The first time, college had been a bore--nothing interested me. This time, everything did.

Although I continued to heal physically, I needed help emotionally. I attended a self-help group.

A counselor suggested that I also join a support group for those with life-threatening illnesses--not for me, but to help others. This kept my problems in perspective. It also gave me a chance to repay a debt. I'd asked for help; it came as a chance to help others.

As a member of a student organization which helped people with disabilities, I realized a fulfillment different from academic achievement. Paradoxically, the more I did for others the less I thought about me, and the better I felt about myself.

Transferring to the University of South Florida, I became an officer for several clubs while continuing my other commitments.

Filling out a scholarship application, I pondered "Who IS this guy?" The person I'd become bore little resemblance to the person I'd once been.

Having spent more than enough time in bars and pool halls to complete several degrees, I wondered how much credit was mine. I didn't plan to have a brain tumor, and I also hadn't arranged all that had happened since then.

A once indignant "Why me?" had become a quiet "Why me? Thank you" to what I still didn't know.

This new life excited me. An early influence was Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Awed by his triumph over years in concentration camps, I was inspired by his transcendence over pain and loss. Frankl helped me make sense of such experiences. He stated what I suspected: although we may distract ourselves, people seek meaning. Compared to the losses Frankl endured, my experiences paled. I was humbled.

Irvin Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy discussed issues that fascinated me: meaning in life and death, existential isolation. Drawing from literature and philosophy, Yalom examined the questions I asked, timeless questions pondered throughout history.

From Jung I discovered synchronicity--events connected by meaning rather than cause and effect. He described his near death experience during a heart attack, and blended psychology with spirituality.

Expanding upon Jung, mythologist Joseph Campbell summarized years of studying cultures suggesting that the word "God" was merely a metaphor for The Mystery.

A peculiar, personal "intellectual spirituality" took form. Reading voraciously and omnivorously, quantum mechanics, philosophy, astronomy, history, I sought ways to understand.

I realized I wouldn't arrive at THE answer. Yet, I was enchanted by the process. Walt Whitman suggested that God was a journey.

Philosopher Paul Tillich's observation that the concept of "God" was not necessarily "A Being" but rather "Being itself" helped me reframe rejected childhood beliefs.

Being encompassed a constant process of becoming and dying, moment to moment. Change is the only constant. Permanence, Buddhists suggested, is illusion.

I began to notice simple things: my cut finger healing, a spider weaving its web. I gazed at stars knowing that I consisted of atoms originating in dying, exploding stars. Thermodynamics revealed that nothing is created nor destroyed, but merely changes form. Water could be liquid, solid or gas depending upon conditions. Einstein described energy and matter as interchangeable.

Perhaps this energy was influenced by conditions. Could this energy or "God whose name I did not know" be both comforting presence and indifferent gravity plunging someone from a rooftop? Was approaching this force, this presence, with a list of demands like a greedy child at Christmas misguided? I was too limited to know. It seemed almost arrogant to expect to understand.

As a youth I had rejected someone's dogma, one perspective. There were many: American Indians, shamans, Taoists--a buffet of beliefs. I'd assumed what I'd been taught was all there was. What would I have believed if born in another century or country?

Death seemed less intimidating after reading Michael Sabom, Stanislav Grof, Raymund Moody and other educated or spiritual individuals. Several cultures suggested that it was simply the next step. Physicists pondered parallel universes.

Stephen Levine's A Gradual Awakening offered user-friendly explanations of mindfulness meditation, and Buddhist perspectives on awareness, karma, and illusion.

A wise friend suggested "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I couldn't wait to meet others.

This journey's not been flawless. There have been detours, disappointments and lessons to be learned. Most telling were my father's death, and the end of an engagement. I expect others.

Most of the time I'm grateful for what I once took for granted, reminding myself that disappointment is re-direction.

I talk to this "God whose name I do not know." Thanking, not asking. C.S. Lewis observed that prayer changes the one who prays, not conditions.

My GPA literally doubled what it'd been years before. By graduation, I'd received a dozen scholarships and awards. The University of Florida offered a fellowship.

Had someone predicted any of this a dozen years before, I'd have questioned his sanity.

Today I struggle with my dissertation at The University of Iowa's Rehabilitation Counselor Education Ph.D. program.

It's been hard work, and I still wonder how I've accomplished it. But should I also take credit for my heartbeat? For being born into a supportive, caring family?

Einstein once observed that the most beautiful encounter was The Mysterious.

Although it remains a mystery why I developed a brain tumor, it seems that it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

Copyright © 1999 Bill Asenjo. All rights rserved.

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