Chapter 13. I Could be Hit by a Bus Tomorrow

Part Four: Living (and Dying) Well

Part Four: Living (and Dying) Well

This chapter opens Part Four: Living (and Dying) Well, the final section of Glioblastology.

After navigating diagnosis, clinical encounters, and survivorship, this new section shifts toward the emotional and philosophical terrain of mortality, drawing on both personal experience and cultural movements that shape how we talk about death.
This chapter reframes the cliché—“you could be hit by a bus tomorrow”—through the lens of life with a terminal diagnosis.

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13. I Could Be Hit by a Bus Tomorrow

The MRI machine is both sensory deprivation and sensory overload. Ambient light from the room outside the machine, a mirror to reflect that world inside the tube. Vibrations and sounds—knocks and pings like someone mining for something inside your head. I was totally uncertain of the total duration; neither how long I’d been in there, nor when the tech would slide me out.

“Mr. Hayden, we need to place the IV.”

This was for the delivery of contrast dye; a heavy metal called gadolinium. By 2020 I had accumulated enough in my body that I joked I’d trip the metal detector at airport security.

“You could be hit by a bus tomorrow.”
People say this in casual conversation, in moments that brush against the discomfort of mortality. Everyone dies. Yes. But not everyone is dying. Not now. Not yet. There is something false about the statement. Something deflective.

You say, “Any of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow,” and I nod—but inside I’m thinking, Sure. But I wake up every day knowing I might not see the next scan.

I understand why people say it. It’s an attempt to relate. An attempt to shrink the gap between one person’s terminal illness and another’s ordinary vulnerability. And I appreciate the instinct. But there’s a difference between imagining a bus and living under its shadow.