“For his first twenty-five years, my son Rich was healthy. He was six feet, two inches tall and two hundred pounds. He kept fit by playing basketball and riding his bike just about everywhere. Since he was a Democrat and I was a Republican, we had a lot of debates. Usually, he won.

In the fall of 2005, Rich started working on a masters degree in political science at San Diego State University. During his first few months at SDSU, he called me every day from his cell phone, crying. “Mom, just stay on with me,” he’d say. And of course, I did. I knew something was off, but I didn’t know what to do about it. He’d never had panic attacks before.

Soon enough, Rich fell in love with the school and with San Diego. He worked as a teaching assistant and spent seven days a week in Room 131 of Nasatir Hall, the political science building. He wrote his master’s thesis on the politics of stadium building. In his graduation picture, in the Spring of 2006, he squinted. One of his eyes would not open all the way.

Rich stayed in San Diego and applied for law school. He told me that even if he got in, he wasn’t sure if he should attend, because he’d developed short-term memory problems.

In the Fall of 2007, Craig, my husband, and I went to visit our son. We’d pick him up in the morning and run errands. Then Rich would go back to his apartment for a nap until dinner time.

We didn’t get it.

Rich’s girlfriend told us, “He gets headaches a lot. He curls up like a cat and sleeps by the patio window–every day.”

Before leaving, I noticed a vein on the right side of Rich’s hairline that traveled to his right eye, just above his eyebrow. A few months later, he developed problems with his balance, and he had nosebleeds every morning. We thought it was a deviated septum, which I’d had. He scheduled a doctor’s appointment for March 14, 2008.

Thursday evening, March 13, I was home checking email. Craig was taking a shower. The phone rang, and Rich whispered, “Mom?” He had the worst headache of his life, and he’d been projectile vomiting all over his apartment.“Get an ambulance immediately,” I told him. “Get to the hospital.”

The emergency room doctor called us at one in the morning. Rich had bleeding on the brain. He’d had a seizure and would need more testing….

Ten days later, Rich, Craig and I sat in the neurosurgeon’s office. The doctor said, “glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer….”

I could not pronounce glioblastoma multiforme, but I could ask, “What causes it?”