I used to be a reasonably normal person.

I mean, “normal” is doing some heavy lifting there, but I had a job. A mortgage. Hobbies. I could call a doctor’s office without immediately feeling my blood pressure rise.

Those were simpler times.

I am now an absolutely unhinged rabid administrative chipmunk armed with a cell phone, a patient portal login, a frighteningly detailed memory for who said what and when, and approximately zero tolerance for chicanery.

I did not choose this life.

The American healthcare system chose it for me.

The backstory

As many of you know, my husband, Mike, had brain surgery in April 2025.

There really isn’t a cute way to work “brain surgery” into a sentence, so there you go.

What followed was radiation, chemotherapy, more chemotherapy, MRIs, appointments, bloodwork, more MRIs, scanxiety, and an entirely new vocabulary I never particularly wanted to learn.

For a while, things looked good.

Then came May 2026.

His MRI showed a new spot.

Not necessarily a tumor. Not necessarily not a tumor. Just a troubling little guy hanging out near the edge of the radiation field, apparently determined to become the next main character in our lives.

So we watched it.

And then we scanned again.

And again.

The original spot kept growing. More questionable spots appeared. Some of the imaging suggested progression. Other parts looked more like radiation damage or inflammation. Perfusion was low. Doctors disagreed. Tumor boards discussed it.

In other words:

Could be tumor growth. Could be radiation necrosis. Perhaps it’s inflammation. Maybe some combination of the above. Welcome to Hell. Please take a number.

Meanwhile, Mike is standing there like, “Okay.”

And I am over here building a command center.

Apparently I work here now

There is a very specific kind of insanity that comes from loving someone with a serious illness.

You are terrified.

But you cannot simply be terrified, because you have a pile of stuff to do.

There are appointments to schedule. Records to obtain. Images to transfer. Doctors who need to talk to other doctors. Insurance companies. Billing departments. Authorizations. Portals. Phone calls.

So many phone calls.

And every single organization seems to operate under the assumption that somewhere else in the system exists a competent adult who is handling all of this.

Spoiler alert:

It’s me.

I’m the competent adult.

Which should quite frankly alarm everyone involved.

At one point we needed Mike’s imaging transferred from MUSC to the neurosurgeon we were seeing locally.

Simple, right?

Oh, you sweet precious soul. Bless your heart.

The images were sent.

Except they weren’t received.

Except maybe they were sent.

Except nobody could confirm where they went.

Except the appointment was approaching and the neurosurgeon could not very well offer an opinion on BRAIN IMAGES HE COULD NOT SEE.

And that is when something inside me began to change.

I grew tiny claws.

My incisors sharpened.

My tail became inexplicably fluffy.

Enter the chipmunk

I absolutely CHEWED into a woman from the records department at MUSC who happened to be the third miserable soul with the misfortune of telling me, once again, that the images had NOT been sent to the neurosurgeon “because there is a process.”

Really, AMANDA? Perhaps I’m not the person you should be having this conversation with, AMANDA. Perhaps, AMANDA, you should have had this conversation with Lawanda at Dr. Engh’s office TWO WEEKS AGO, AMANDA. I don’t CARE about your process, AMANDA. Just FIGURE. IT. OUT. AMANDA.

And that’s how I ruined poor Amanda’s name for her. I imagine her retreating to a corner, shuddering, with her thumb in her mouth and her hands over her eyes anytime she hears her name now.

But Amanda did put on her big girl panties, figured it out, and the images got where they needed to go.

We met with the neurosurgeon.

He reviewed everything and agreed that what we were seeing was unlikely to simply be pseudoprogression. Gamma Knife radiosurgery was a potential option, but by itself it wasn’t his recommendation. Neither was throwing another treatment at something when we still didn’t actually know what the something was.

His recommendation was a stereotactic biopsy.

Then he talked to Mike’s neuro-oncologist.

They agreed.

I even asked the neurosurgeon the question you probably aren’t supposed to ask doctors but that I absolutely asked anyway:

“If this were your wife, what would you do?”

Before I could even finish, he said, “Biopsy.”

Okay then.

So. Mike decided on door number three: Biopsy.

October 5.

You would think having an actual plan would calm the rabid chipmunk.

You would be wrong.

Because now we have entered the exciting pre-surgical phase of this adventure, in which apparently every administrative department in the southeastern United States gets an opportunity to test me personally.

Enter…Chelsea

Yesterday I had an issue involving insurance and billing.

I will spare you every excruciating detail because I would like both of us to survive this blog post.

But at some point, while I was trying to understand what the heck was happening, I got:

“I don’t know. I’m not in billing.”

Oh.

Okay.

Cool.

Neither am I, CHELSEA.

I’M NOT IN BILLING EITHER.

I am actually a data analytics manager.

Do you know what I have learned about billing systems in the last 18 months?

MORE THAN I EVER WANTED TO KNOW.

I don’t work in medical records either, yet somehow I have become remarkably proficient at tracking down MRIs.

I don’t work in neurosurgery, yet I can now casually use words like “perfusion,” “radiation necrosis” and “stereotactic biopsy” in a sentence.

I don’t work in insurance, yet here I am.

So when YOU call ME because there is a problem involving my husband’s upcoming BRAIN BIOPSY, “I don’t know, I’m not in billing” is perhaps not the soothing customer-service response you think it is.

Chelsea did eventually call me back.

And I was trying.

I really was.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Yes.”

I was using my Professional Adult Voice™.

And then she made a comment about me getting upset.

And the chipmunk broke containment.

“Oh no, CHELSEA. You do NOT get to get an attitude with me.”

And away we went. I made her cry. To be fair, she made me cry first. And then I maybe threw my phone. I maybe screamed at poor Eyja, barking her fool head off in the yard because her favorite neighbor was home.

Was it my finest moment? Nope.

Do I regret telling her that the way she handled the situation was “shitty”? Also nope.

It’s…complicated. I’m complicated.

This is apparently who I am now

Here’s the thing.

I don’t want to be the woman who loses her shit on somebody at a doctor’s office.

I don’t wake up in the morning, stretch luxuriously, rub my hands together and think:

You know what sounds fun today? Berating a medical administrator and ruining Amanda and Chelsea’s day.

I would actually prefer they not call at all.

I would prefer to be thinking about literally anything else.

What I want is for my husband not to have a brain tumor.

What I want is for an MRI to just be an MRI instead of an event that divides our lives into Before We Know and After We Know.

What I want is to stop knowing what the inside of my husband’s brain looks like.

I want to stop examining every tiny change in his speech, every exhausted afternoon, every weird step, wondering whether it means something.

I want someone else to keep track of which doctor has which scan.

I want someone else to notice when something hasn’t been sent.

I want someone else to make the phone call.

I want, just occasionally, to not be the person responsible for making sure the train stays on the tracks.

But that’s not where we are.

So I make the calls.

I send the messages.

I keep the notes.

I ask the questions.

I follow up.

And when somebody tells me something has been handled, I have learned to check whether it has, in fact, been handled.

Because the stakes aren’t an incorrect cable bill.

They’re Mike.

And I love him more than I care whether somebody thinks I’m difficult.

So here we are

On October 5, Mike will have a stereotactic brain biopsy. Which is, in fact, brain surgery. I won’t drag you through the details here, but the procedure is not without risk and will require at least one night in the hospital for monitoring.

So he’ll undergo the procedure.

And then we wait.

Again.

For pathology. For an updated molecular profile.

Maybe it will show recurrent tumor. Maybe radiation damage. Maybe something else. I have learned not to get too attached to any particular answer until somebody actually has tissue under a microscope.

I don’t have an inspirational ending for this.

There is no neat little lesson tied up with a sparkly pink bow, as much as I wish there was.

We’re still in it.

I’m scared.

I’m exhausted.

I’m angry more often than I’d like to admit.

I am also still laughing, because sometimes the choices are laugh or start biting people, and apparently biting medical-office personnel is frowned upon.

So for now, I remain vigilant.

Phone charged.

Portal password memorized.

Receipts organized.

Tiny claws out.

Just an absolutely rabid administrative chipmunk trying to get her husband through brain cancer.

And God help the next person who tells me:

“I don’t know. I’m not in billing.”

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