June 2021 Creative nonfiction essay published in The Cincinnati Review
Teh-chang came home a couple of days after the surgery, wheeled out of the hospital with a cotton bandage wrapped around his head cartoon-style and, even stranger-looking, a white mesh Styrofoam netting gathered into a point on top of that, which made him resemble a delicate fruit packaged for long-distance transportation.
He had survived having his skull sawn open, a surgeon slicing out a tumor over a centimeter and a half in diameter and then putting his head back together. If that were all, it would have been a happy ending. Instead, it was just the beginning.
The brain tumor was not the source but an emissary. Stage 4 lung cancer. The intern just happened to mention the words printed on the chart during his morning rounds. And that was how they found out.
Read longer excerpt here.
Wendy Cheng 