In a piece that appeared on Ciao, Cancer! last week, “How to beat cancer: prevention and early detection”, I promised to share how I found out I had a tumor. I have a school teacher to thank, a woman whom I’ve never met. She saved my live—by nearly killing me.

It was a particularly hot summer, 1986, and I was cruising on my bike through the streets of Pasadena to get to C&H Surplus, a Valhalla for tinkerers and science geeks. I was working on a homemade laser, and they had all the parts that such a project required.

The traffic lights on Colorado Boulevard are well-sequenced to facilitate continuous movement through multiple intersections by vehicles traveling at the speed limit (35 miles per hour). I’d start out on the west side of Pasadena with a pack of cars at a red light, and stay with them heading east for four or five blocks before the signal would change, leaving me behind. I’d occasionally push through an intersection just as a light was turning yellow, but I learned quickly of the risk posed by left-turners coming from the opposite direction. By late June, after three weeks of visits to C&H, I had traffic pretty well figured out.

I’d made it through a few intersections and was approaching Allen and Colorado at a good clip. There was a van coming in the opposite direction in the left lane, but I wasn’t particularly concerned. The signals were still with me, and the only time I’d had problems before was when I would compete with left-turners to clear the intersection as the light turned yellow.

I had committed to crossing through that intersection at full speed when I realized that the lady in the van was going to turn left in front of me. She didn’t see me, I would later find out. Time slowed to a standstill, and I considered my options. A hard right turn onto Allen Street might save me the initial collision, but if she continued her own turn onto Allen and didn’t see me, well, she’d run over me. A hard left might clear me entirely, but only if she remained committed to her left turn. She hadn’t seen me thus far, so the latter option looked more attractive. I chose it, and made a hard left.

Bad choice, at least for the moment. At the last minute, she saw me, and both of us made sudden changes to our plans. She slammed on her breaks and spun her steering wheel to the right; I tried to pop out of my left turn so my bike would clear her. We ended up in perfect alignment, and a moment later my bike slammed into the front of her van.

In the police report, witness number one says that she saw my body flying—now in the opposite direction—past her window. I sailed back for ten feet before slamming down on the asphalt. My head hit first, and I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I was unconscious, whether by the impact with the van, which broke all of the weld seams on my bike, or my body’s touchdown a few seconds later.

Paramedics arrived on the scene quickly,  and I was whisked off to Huntington Hospital, a medical facility I would return to one month later. The ER doctor was amazed to find me without a single broken bone, and no serious damage to my head. The worst injury I sustained—burns on my back and arms—occurred when the paramedics cut off my shirt, leaving my body exposed to 120 degree asphalt. My father showed up at the hospital, and I went home with him that evening.

A week after the accident, I started having episodes. They’d come on like a storm—dizziness, vertigo, nausea, and the sensation that I was trapped inside a tube—and disappear as quickly, after which I’d sleep for two or three hours. I tried to explain them to my mother but couldn’t remember what happened, and it wasn’t until a friend I played baseball with witnessed one that a clear description of the symptoms became available. My mom scheduled an appointment with a neurologist for the following day.

Dr. Spitzer said the episodes were in fact seizures, and that the near-certain cause was trauma to my brain from the accident. He prescribed anti-seizure medication; I could ease off the medication in several months and see if the seizures returned. My mother wasn’t satisfied. Waiting a few months to learn if the problem had been resolved was completely unacceptable to her. She asked if there was anything he could do to be certain of the cause of the seizures, and he repeated that it was most likely due to the accident. She repeated her question—firmly—and he yielded. We could do a CT scan—they were new at the time and very expensive—but it was unlikely to reveal anything. Do it, she said.

We received a phone call from Dr. Spitzer in the afternoon of the day I had the scan. He provided no information over the phone, but asked us to come in the following morning.

I don’t remember what he said, exactly, just that I didn’t like how he did it. Too much talking. Get to the point. He ultimatelydid: you have a brain tumor, and you’re going to need surgery right away. The day was July 27, 1986. Ten days later, I returned to Huntington Hospital, this time for brain surgery.

Sometimes I think about the woman who hit me. She was a public school teacher, the police report said. I can’t imagine how she must have felt. She taught children, and here she’d almost killed one. But in this case—with no intent to help or harm—she saved my life.

I have her name around here somewhere; it’s in the copy of the police report. The next time I’m out in Pasadena, I’ll try to find her. Do you remember hitting a kid on a bike in the summer of 1986? That was me, and I’d like to say thanks.