On the 6th of March 2026, I started my day like any other. I headed into work with a jacket I’d bought online and decided I didn’t like no big deal, I’d pop to Zara on my lunch break to return it, grab something from my favourite little Asian restaurant, and head back to work to interview a long list of potential new staff members.
That’s the last thing I remember.
Sometime later, I woke up in the back of an ambulance.
I was covered in bruises and cuts I had no memory of receiving. I had suffered a substantial seizure while driving. I had smashed into two parked vehicles and the brick wall of an office building in Mt Gravatt. Onlookers found me still seizing after the crash.
I hadn’t made it to Zara. I hadn’t had lunch. I hadn’t interviewed a single person.
In an instant, the ordinary had become something else entirely.
The Hospital
I was taken to a public hospital in Brisbane. And to be honest it was rough.
I was placed in a room with four other patients. One of them watched South Park at full volume for hours at a time and, having overheard everything from the doctors’ morning rounds, proceeded to ask me deeply personal questions on a loop. There is something uniquely awful about lying in a hospital bed, scared and confused, while your medical history becomes someone else’s conversation starter.
We knew, fortunately, exactly which surgeon we wanted. He had operated on a close family friend, and also on my mother-in-law; both times with real success. We weren’t going to leave that to chance. But getting a transfer took far longer than it ever should have. For several days, staff repeatedly asked whether I’d like to have surgery there. Each time, I explained we were waiting to transfer to our chosen surgeon. Each time, we waited. It was one of the most exhausting and frustrating experiences of my life which, given everything else that was happening, is saying something.
On the 13th of March, I underwent surgery to remove an Anaplastic diffuse glioma, grade 3 a brain tumour. My surgeon removed as much of it as he safely could.
I’ll never forget the moment I heard those words. *Brain tumour.* It didn’t feel real. It still doesn’t, sometimes. It’s the kind of phrase you hear in a film, or in someone else’s story — not your own. Not on a Thursday, seven days after you were planning to grab Vietnamese for lunch.
There’s no clean way to absorb news like that. You just hold it, and keep breathing.
What made it even more surreal was something my neurosurgeon told me shortly after. We had a cruise to Alaska planned — something we’d been looking forward to, out in the middle of the ocean, thousands of kilometres from anywhere. He told me that if the accident hadn’t happened, if I’d gone on that cruise without knowing what was growing in my brain, I most likely would have died within a month. Out there at sea, far from any hospital, far from any help. The accident that totalled Ashley’s car and left me covered in cuts and bruises — the one that felt like the worst thing that could possibly happen that day — may well have saved my life. I’m still sitting with that.
Here’s the other thing I keep coming back to, the thing that still genuinely blows my mind:
I’m okay.
I’m mobile. I’m mostly independent. Sometimes I’m a little slow — and I’m learning to be patient with that, which is its own kind of work. But I am still, unmistakably, me. My sense of humour. My opinions. My love for Ashley. My ability to be annoyed by a jacket that doesn’t sit right.
All of it, still here.
When I think about what a brain tumour means, what surgery on your brain means — and then I look at myself, walking around, writing this, existing in the world — I don’t have words for how extraordinary that feels. The human body, and the people who know how to work with it, are remarkable things.
Why I’m Writing This
I’m writing this because it happened, and pretending it didn’t isn’t really my style.
I’m writing it because if you’re reading this after your own diagnosis, or sitting in a hospital waiting for news about someone you love, I want you to know: the fear is real, the frustration is real, and so is the possibility of coming out the other side still yourself.
And I’m writing it because one day I’ll look back on the version of me who sat down to type this out tired, a little slow, still processing and I want her to know she did the right thing by being honest about it.
One ordinary Tuesday, my life changed completely.
But I’m still here. And honestly? That’s everything.
More updates to come. Thank you for reading Char xx