“The first thing I remember after surgery is being able to move my hands and feet and breathe on my own. I remember smiling. I was not paralyzed. My neurosurgeon later told me that I said, ‘I’m a rock star.’ I probably did. It sounds like something I would say.”

So begins Dawn’s recovery from a surgery that removed a spinal cord tumor located in what doctors refer to as “a high real estate area” of her spine—cervical levels 1 and 2, just below the brain. The tumor was a grade II ependymoma.

Adults with spinal cord tumors are exceedingly rare, and written accounts of what it’s like to survive tumor-removal surgery are even more rare. Dawn was told that things would be “different” after surgery, but she had no idea just how strange her sensory experiences would turn out to be.

Through writing the book, ReWired: A Story of Recovery from Spinal Cord Tumor Surgery, Dawn hopes to give those who are on a similar journey the reassurance that they are not alone. She not only offers a glimpse into what their post-surgical experience might be like, she also offers insights on how they might accept their body’s “new language” with curiosity, humor, gratitude and grace.

Here is an excerpt from her book.

Day One

When I woke up from surgery, my body felt numb and I could not determine the outline of my body from my collarbone to my toes. It felt like my nerves were reaching beyond the boundary of my skin. The only parts of my body that felt normal were my shoulders and above. The strange thing about the numbness is that I could feel things—my body sensed touch—but it was not in the same way I had felt things before. I could feel the medical staff poke me with sharp vs. dull objects and could tell the difference between them, but it almost felt like it was happening to someone else’s body. Another way to describe it is that it felt like there was an energetic force field around my body and when people touched me it felt like they were touching the edges of the force field and not actually touching my body.

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