It's All in Your Head

by Maria McCutchen

Maria McCutchen did not have time to be sick. With a husband who had just lost a job, two young sons, and a cross-country move on the horizon, who had time to be sick? Maria didn't have time for a common cold, let alone a major medical condition. But one day while shopping in the grocery store where she had shopped hundreds of times before, she couldn't find the milk. It was then she knew what she was feeling was more than just stress or exhaustion. There was something very wrong. After consulting a few doctors, Maria discovered she had a rare brain cyst known as a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst—a very large brain cyst. Hearing these cysts were normally asymptomatic was of little comfort, especially because she felt her mind and body slipping away more and more every day. Normal mental and physical functions were becoming harder to control. Even if the doctors didn't believe the cyst was a problem, she knew it was.It would take months of living inside a shell of a person that she'd become, months of living in a mental fogginess and sometimes even physical pain, before she would finally get the medical attention she needed. It's All in Your Head chronicles her harrowing medical odyssey and her attempts to regain some sort of semblance of her old life after treatment.

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 11, 2011

Reviews

[Esther Bradley-detally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maria McCutchen, a stay-at-home mother with two young children and a tight schedule, couldn't find the dairy section of her local supermarket one day. After the usual questions women ask themselves, about stress, being over tired, or I'm imagining this, she asked her husband one night, "Squeeze my head," and he does.

Her head ached, and her head also felt like a water balloon pumped full of water, a sense of building pressure. He wrapped his hands around her head, and he squeezed. Her thoughts became more clear, and she felt better. He stopped and a feeling of flood water filled her skull, and her brain fog returned.

She consulted a mild, quiet and pleasant doctor. He will be the first of many. She answered the questions, and then follows a routine she will learn by heart: "Stick your tongue out, smile, hold your hands out in front of you like you're carrying a pizza and close your eyes." Ah, and she also walked across the floor of his miniscule office. Long story short, after an MRI, and a call the very next day, "We see something," the doctor's voice matter-of-fact, offering no more or no less says, "I need you to come in."

She had a cisterna magna, a posterior fossa arachnoid cyst. But the doctor was not concerned, words such as "benign" and "unremarkable" floated over her head. Moments later, a handshake, and a "You're fine," because you see most people are born with type of cyst and they don't cause problems. She returned home wondering, what if I'm the exception? No time for that. Her husband lost his job. Their insurance will run out.

Fast forward to a harrowing pain-filled drive to live in New Mexico, episodic endurance of brain tests done incorrectly, dismissal of her symptoms, suspicion by doctors and blatant repudiation of her illness. Lace that in with family concern, trying to raise 2 kids, keep a family together, and obliterating pain, agony, nausea, you name it, but then, she finally finds a doctor in Arizona. He will recommend brain surgery. the tests before, during and after are trauma filled and painful, and there will be trouble in River City after her brain surgery. But still she reassured herself that she's in the hands of a good neurosurgeon specialist in neurology in Arizona. She must, however, return to New Mexico. More happened.

I sat down after 7 o'clock last night to read this book. I got up at 12.30 noting, "I'm up too late again," but I had finished the book. I didn't move. I sat on my black leather couch in our small pool house turning page after page.

The unsaid around her struggles reveals a very courageous, loving, gutsy woman in extreme pain, with great times of hopeless and yet a warrior spirit. That makes a noble being in my book.

Her account is well written. I think this book should go viral. Yeah, I just broadened my blog base, and here I am using trendy terms, go viral, but the bloggers and FBers out there will know.

It's All in Your Head - Maria McCutchen. Copyright (c), Take Publishing, LLC.

http://www.creativewritenow.com

280 pages - $15.99 (paperback)
$9.99 (digital download)

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maria McCutchen, the mother of two young boys at the time of her illness is a courageous woman. Suddenly when not able to find the dairy isle in the grocery store, Maria realizes this has got to be more than stress. She is diagnosed with an acrachnoid brain cyst and the journey begins from doctor to doctor as she tries to hold her life together. Her story is a heartwarming one as the reader is taken through diagnosis and the unkind medical professionals she dealt with along the way. Maria is stronger than many could even hope to be.