Celebrity Pet Head-Rocks

For as common as meningiomas are, some of you meningiomates reading this may be the only person you know to have a non-cancerous lesion in your head, and you’re freaked out. However, if you ask around, you may find that more people than you realize have or have had a meningioma. (I now personally know four other women who fit the category.)

Too polite to pry into people’s medical histories? Then take comfort in knowing that there are some celebrities who share your condition. So far, I’ve uncovered these illustrious names: Elizabeth Taylor, Mary Tyler Moore, and Sheryl Crow. Fortunately, in most of the articles about these three women, the medical information has been sound. The type of surgery Taylor had is described in surprising detail. There are some takeaways from reading these articles:

1.     More women than men are diagnosed with meningiomas.

2.     The symptoms that prompt someone to get an MRI may have nothing to do with the meningioma, as may be the case with Crow’s memory issues. (True also of my right-side numbness issues in 2013.)

3.     The cause of any particular meningioma is unclear, though researchers posit that radiation exposure, family genetics, and female hormones may play a role.

Recently, another celebrity made headlines with her own pet head-rock: Maria Menounos, a former host of E! News. Earlier this year, Menounos experienced facial numbness and slurred speech. She underwent a craniotomy in June to remove the meningioma.

Initially, I was highly irritated to read her story because several headlines read, “Menounos Blames Bullying and Toxic Environment for Contributing to Brain Tumor.” (That one comes from FoxNews … ahem.) My response was, “Great. Another dim-bulb celebrity who thinks she knows science spouting off about health issues.” This blogpost was largely going to be a rant about that.

Then I read and reread other articles. Menounos did not say that. Though she identifies stress as a contributing factor for poor health (true), in most of the interviews I’ve read she never explicitly tied her stress to her meningioma. The bullying and toxicity of the entertainment industry, she states, are to blame for her ignoring the symptoms for a while and putting off getting an MRI. To add to her stress, her mother was undergoing treatment for stage 4 brain cancer. Ahhh, that’s a very different headline, no?

Some comments from Menounos struck me:

·       In July, she tweeted, “I’ve never been more excited about life. I see so much so clearly.” I remember feeling that way. After surgery, you are surrounded by caring people. You feel everyone’s support. And brain surgery feels like (and is) a big deal; we expect Big Deals to change us, change our perspectives on Life. One does become more introspective at such times. However—and I hate that this is true—you eventually return to normal. That blessed clarity that one feels is prompted by medication and brain swelling. After a few weeks, you will discover that you were actually more in a fog than possessing of crystal life-vision. Your brain just wasn’t capable of managing complicated things, so it kept things simple. Simplicity of thought sometimes seems like clarity.

·       “I just want to be still for a bit and see what I’m supposed to be in this world.” If you read my last post, the word still should jump out at you. Stillness is something I had for 2-3 weeks after surgery, stillness of body, mind, and life in general. (It’s a bit odd to say “mind,” as the steroid made me wired and slightly manic, but my thoughts were centered on my brain, not work, not politics.) This desire for stillness is one aspect of craniotomy recovery that may linger. Craniotomies force you to detach from the world and even from yourself a bit. It’s a chance to strip away the hubbub and minutiae of life, and that can be beautiful, or at least peaceful. Once you return to yourself, you have to work harder to maintain that stillness.

I hope Maria Menounos and I are able to keep some of that stillness that our craniotomies gave us. I already feel it slipping away with the bustle of the holidays and the clock ticking down to my return to work. This break from life as usual didn’t give me any answers, but it did give me a peek into a life that serves me better. In an interview from August, Menounos captured how I've felt about this experience: 

“For me having so much time and so much stillness, I’ve been able to look back and everything. And I did see this all as a gift and I did shift everything into positives throughout this whole journey,” she continued. “I think that’s really important. We’re all going to have really hard times in life. It’s how we respond, how we react, how we shift to see the good. Because out of every bad thing, something good comes if you see it — if you open your mind to it.”

Perhaps that's the main takeaway from this all: When you open your skull, you open your mind.