Innocent beginnings. She no longer trusts anything that seems innocent or innocuous; she knows better now. Complain to her doctor that the hearing in her left ear doesn’t seem very good, and the next thing she knows, she’s got a lime-sized tumor in her brain. And then a stroke that almost kills her. Now she gimps around with a cane and a slightly lop-sided look on her face. This looks ok? That seems harmless?

Fuck you, she’d say now. She’d learned better than to trust anything’s purported innocence.

Even her own.

Human nature being what it is, she is unable, in the darker nights, to avoid wondering what she had done to bring this on herself. The dope in high school? The dope and drinking in college? The dope, drinking and really good sex that summer in Massachusetts? Or perhaps God just didn’t like her attitude. That was cool with her; she didn’t care much for His. “Fuck you” also applied to Him, Whoever and Whatever He was. At times, she almost felt grateful that He’d let her survive, but usually she gave credit for that to the doctors, the nurses, and her mom’s endles presence at her side during the Tumorpalooza. For herself, here on the survive-and-recover side of things, there are only questions, bouts of obscure guilt, and the determination to get back as much of her life as possible.

Which she works on with that slightly jaded view of the world. She no longer takes anything at face value. She’d thought her hearing problem was an ear infection of some kind. How could anyone have guessed “brain tumor”? Now her expectation is to find something insidious under the surface. She doesn’t enjoy looking at life through that lens, but surviving something that have easily killed her has done more than make walking difficult.

It has made trusting the world almost impossible.

She accepts that this is the way her brain is going to view the world from now on. She doesn’t blame it. The grey matter that filled up her cranium had been invaded by this thing, this nasty vicious lump of useless cells that had no purpose other than to make a goddamn good try at killing her. Of course her brain is not going to look favorably on the outside world. Her heart provides good balance, fortunately, allowing her to recover with what everyone tells her is an amazing attitude and inspiring spirit.

To herself, she calls it “no other choice”. Despair or hope; she has no other choices. The former is as useful to her as roller blades, and roller blades would kill her very quickly if she tried to move in them. Her hope is a bit different than what other people know. For her, hope means a lot of hard work in physical therapy, finding new ways to do the mundane things in life, and a lot of help from her parents in paying $100,000 in medical bills. Her hope is not dreamy or heart-warming; her hope is the equivalent of taking the next breath, and then the next, and then the next.

Surviving.

When she told the doctor about her hearing problem, he’d sent her to have an MRI. “It’s probably nothing, but there is a very slight chance it could be.” Pressed to identify what the very slight chance could be, he’d said the word for the first time: Tumor. “But,” he’d assured her, “the chances of that are very, very small.”

Turned out: not small enough.

Two weeks later, she was lying in a hospital bed in Phoenix, Arizona, where the lime-sized tumor he’d tried to assure her was a very, very small possibility cut off the flow of blood in her brain, induced a stroke, and almost killed her. So yea, she had a jaundiced view of “innocent” and “innocuous” and other little bits of the world that tried to hide how very much they wanted to take a massive bite out of her ass.

On the long journey called recovery, she balances her cynicism and hopefulness, working hard on getting stronger, on learning how to do things that only a short time earlier hadn’t required any thought, like walking down the street without falling over. Her ability to do that, to get from Point A to Point B while remaining upright, has led to one of her favorite parts of surviving the stroke, beside the pre-eminent fact of having survived the stroke: canes. No longer able to walk without the help of her third leg, she has done what any sensible American woman would do: she has bought the accessories. In her case, canes. Not a huge number, but her collection is impressive after only a few months. Wood, metal, ornate, simple, several with the ability to hold alcohol, one with a sword (not sharp but it makes a good gag), and even one made of plexiglass. She is still looking for the perfect cane, but until it appears, she has bought or been given thirty-one canes in the twenty months since her brain had almost been deep-sixed by the tumor.

The cane the crew at Renfro’s gave her is her favorite. It’s lousy for walking with, but it is beautiful. A gorgeous Madrona branch, carved by an artist who lives in Coos Bay, and bought by Mike Renfro himself. He’d made a special trip to get it, 300 miles round-trip, and she’d felt terrible to inform him that it was as bad for walking as it was beautiful to look at. So Mike put a couple of hooks on the wall behind the bar, and it’s displayed there with a series of photos documenting Tumorpalooza. Whenever she goes to Renfro’s and sees it displayed, she pauses to think one of the good, warm thoughts that come to those who are grateful for the simple fact of not being dead.

Life for Katie Young is not easy in Corvallis, Oregon, but it is good. She’s alive — a good thing despite the obstacles — and she;s getting stronger by the day. She is happy with her life, happy with the possibilities in front of her. She has friends, a place to live, her medical needs are covered, and she is able to pursue some important artistic goals. When asked, she tells people she is doing well. And she is. Things aren’t always easy, but they are good. They seem — good in the way Katie just cannot trust. But in this case, she has no choice. The simple truth is: she’s happy with her life.

Or she was. Until someone murdered by favorite bartender.

Then she got pissed.