Geraldine, the travel blogger behind The Everywhereist, has a brain tumor.
As we’ve been covering the SEO industry for many years, many of our readers may know her best as Rand Fishkin’s wife. Rand, as you probably know, is the CEO of SEOmoz, and as Geraldine explains, The Everywhereist is as much a love letter to her husband as it is a travel blog.
That love is on display, probably as much as it has ever been, as Geraldine has blogged about her tumor, which she has named Steve.
Meet Steve, my brain tumor: http://t.co/VefRbHxx
In her post, Geraldine writes:
As for why I named it Steve, … well, duh. What else was I going to name it? There is no one to whom I am particularly close who is named Steve. I’ve never kissed a boy named Steve. I’ve never uttered the phrase, “Steve, I love you.” And Steve is nice and short and easy to add to a long list of unrepeatable words. Behold:
“Fucking goddamn miserable piece-of-shit Steve.”
See how well that works? It kind of rolls off the tongue, really. And considering how many big words we’ve had to deal with over the last couple of weeks, I’m inclined to stick to something short and sweet and monosyllabic (this must be how the Kardashians feel).
Rand comments on the post:
Fucking goddamn miserable piece-of-shit Steve.
Hey, look at that. It DOES roll off the… er… keyboard.
I’m really proud of you KTL. You’ve been a trooper, and you’ve been so awesome to me these last few weeks. I love that you wrote this, too. You know it’s been tough for me to keep it secret, and I almost feel like part of the reason you’re publishing is to make me feel better. Thank you. I love you. I promise to be (mostly) nice and patient with your Mom while we wait at the hospital.
p.s. We’re not religious, so mentions of various deities may confuse us.
Rand has also been tweeting about the situation:
My wife, @everywhereist has a brain tumor: http://t.co/4kBc1Rf4 It’s been a rough few weeks, but I’m so proud of how she’s handling it.
I’ve been a bit of a mess, personally and professionally, apologies to the Moz team and to anyone whose emails I’ve neglected of late.
Going to crash. ~30 hours until surgery. Knock on wood for us.
Geraldine says the doctors are confident the tumor is not a not a glioma, but rather pilocytic astrocytoma. Characteristics of this, according to the National Brain Tumor Society, which Geraldine linked to, include:
- Slow growing, with relatively well-defined borders
- Grows in the cerebrum, optic nerve pathways, brain stem and cerebellum
- Occurs most often in children and teens
- Accounts for two percent of all brain tumors
The good news, Geraldine says, is that that the doctors say there’s an 80% chance that Steve is benign, and that even if the tumor is not benign, “odds are he’s still very easily treatable.”
Finding out a loved one has a brain tumor is tough news to hear. I know. I’ve lived it. I can’t imagine what it must be like to find out you have one yourself. These two have clearly kept in good spirits about the whole thing, or at least as good as anyone could keep. Considering the circumstances, the outlook seems pretty positive.
Best of luck to Geraldine and Rand.
