I Thought You Were Gone, Mike!

A month ago I posted the results of my follow up with the eye doctor after my tumor was removed, and the results were amazing, even by his standards. Almost all of my peripheral vision has been restored, and still could improve more with time. Yay! I guess such great results kind of set me up on a mountaintop about this whole experience that it’s all over, and life is, once again, back to normal, or as normal as my life is. Not so, my friend. Last week I had my follow up with the neurosurgeon after my New Year’s Eve MRI, 2 months post tumor removal. I looked at the CD they give you. It definitely looked different and that hole was no longer full of the big white spot as you see in the picture, but I have no idea what I’m looking at. As I sat in Dr. Sahni’s office last week waiting for him to come in, I was imagining what he’d say:

Dr. Sahni: Well, Miss Moore, the tumor is totally gone. Dr. Astruc says your vision is almost completely back to normal, so unless you have any problems, I’ll see you in a year. Nice to meet you. Good luck!

That’s not exactly how it went. It’s nothing earth shattering, but there is still some of the tumor left. It is now in the bottom of the cavity where my pituitary gland lives and far away from my optic nerves, so nothing is being affected. It’s just sitting there, and it might just sit there forever, which would be the preferred scenario, but it could also grow back. Cue sound effect of Boos and hissing from the crowd. Apparently it was huge! In fact, Dr. Sahni said that many surgeons would not have removed it by the method mine was removed, through the nasal cavity. It would have been the “movie version” of brain surgery, shaved head, boring into the skull, through the brain stuff. As large as it was, and given the way it was removed, the doctor could not be overly aggressive because that could have caused some permanent damage. So, I am sure you are wondering what happens now. Well, you are if you’re still reading this. In 4 months I have another MRI, cha ching $$, $2400.00, to see if it has grown. If it has, we do the whole thing all over again, or if it hasn’t, we wait, the word everybody loves to hear. In another four months from July we do another MRI, cha ching $$, another $2400, to see if it’s grown, if it still is just sitting there, as my grandmother used to say, like a bump on a log, we wait 6 months, and you guessed it, another MRI. It seems Mike Wasowski just couldn’t bear to leave his Boo. But this isn’t a Disney movie, and I would have preferred for Mike to have just walked back into that closet and shredded my door for good! 

Some Days Are Diamonds. Some Days Are Stones.

It is hard to believe that 2 weeks ago I had brain surgery to remove a "huge" tumor. Thinking back on everything that has happened since September 30th, it seems I'm watching some Lifetime movie. I just thought I was getting older, and I was becoming, at 51, one of those people who doesn't like to drive at night. I just don't see as well. Then going to the eye doctor and being told I had the beginning stages of an incurable disease that would, eventually, leave me blind. Through urgings from others getting a second opinion and finding out that I do not have said disease, but I do have a brain tumor. And now, 2 weeks past surgery, and I am dealing with the aftermath. I have had my share of life changing events starting with infancy. Not even a month after I was born, I choked on some milk and stopped breathing. There were no infant CPR classes in 1963. My father did not know what to do. I do not know how long I was not breathing but finally after my father held me upside down, I began to breathe. When I was 11 years old I was in a car accident where the back window exploded in my face. I had over 100 stitches in my forehead, nose, eyelid and under my eye. Years of plastic surgery would follow. I lost a child before it was ever born. But this brain tumor thing. This has been the hardest to get used to. The hardest part for me is that it didn't seem that hard. The surgery, the recovery in the hospital, the trip home, they didn't seem to carry the weight that BRAIN SURGERY should get. Don't get me wrong. It's not easy. I haven't slept through the night since surgery. I wake up about every hour. I have headaches every morning. My nose feels like it will never be normal again. And then there's the hot flashes I have been having. You see, when all this started, I thought of nothing but the fact that this tumor, because of its placement, was messing with my vision, but what I didn't think about was the fact that it was also growing on my pituitary gland which controls all kinds of things in your body like temperature and metabolism and blood pressure. So now, I must see an Endocrinologist to see how out of whack my pituitary gland got over the last 10 years as this tumor took up residence between the 2 lobes of my brain and crowded out and squeezed the little pea sized gland that controls so much in my body. I have no idea what path this journey will take me on or where I'll end up, but I'm glad to be alive, and I'm learning to not beat myself up just because I haven't bounced right back to where I was. I'll take the diamonds when they come, but remember that navigating the stones is a big part of the journey.