As long as she could remember, she had been able to hear music. It wasn’t a music that just anyone could hear because it emanated from her head. It came from inside of her head. Sometimes it sounded like an orchestra tuning up; sometimes the orchestra played long passages of subtle key changes that slowly evolved into a beautiful crashing wave of sound. At other times the music sounded like some avant-garde jazz ensemble honking away into the tiny hours before day break. As a teen-ager she assumed that what she was hearing, everyone could hear. It was only later that she realized that was not the case. In her early 20s the music began and ended with pain. The headaches would almost knock her down and when she felt them coming on, she had only about three minutes to find a place to lie down. The music and the pain were then accompanied by nausea and blindness. As the orchestral sounds reached for a climax, her vision failed her and changed from color to a world of white; the music in her head devolved into random chaos with the horn section waging was a war against strings, but with percussion edging them both out in the final chord. She sought medical care, finally, and with the saxophone player taking a solo behind a stride piano and the circular brushes of the drummer’s time keeping, was told that there was a tumor pressing on a part of her brain and that it was not operable. She would begin chemo and radiation next week. As she slowly put this information together and attempted to make it understandable, the piano player shifted to a minor key and played a slow and soft solo.

Stumble It!