open up :-)

As expected...

A busy day... Thursday is our day for grocery shopping, supermarket shopping and running. Add a meeting with a brain surgeon and a phone appointment with the cancer doc... It's a busy day.

First, we run. That's the easy bit. Good to get it done, especially with a rain forecast for the afternoon.

Home, shower, tea... and set off for an 11:30 appointment with the surgeon. We've just left home when there's a text: a reminder of the 11:30 appointment -- plus a note that he is currently running 20 to 30 minutes late.

Quick change of plans: We turn into the grocery shop, do our first lot of shopping. I also manage to forward the "delay" message (clever, eh?) to the son who was going to meet us for coffee after the surgeon's appointment.

Home, put away groceries, drive towards the surgery.

Under the hospital -- the parking bays are tiny! Deb doubts she can fit in -- and our car is small. Finally another car pulls forward, we can drive through one bay into his. Turns out, he managed to park -- then couldn't get out of his car.

So we're parked. Upstairs to the surgeon's office. Where we wait. For twenty or thirty minutes.

Meanwhile, a message from our son: The hospital coffee shop is closed, it's a nightmare... He walks off to get a juice somewhere else. After more texts... he goes off and we... wait.

We meet the surgeon and the message is, exactly what I expected. Just with clearer explanations. Which I will happily misunderstand below.

The shape on my MRI scan may be necrosis but that is unlikely. Radiation necrosis generally appears within a year. It's more like three years since my radiation.

There's an area on my scan which is probably a new tumour. It looks like a tumour.  Well, like an MRI scan of a tumour. It's further into the brain than the original tumour. If tumour cells follow the physical channels within the brain -- which they do -- then that is just where a new tumour would grow. Not definitely a tumour -- but very likely.

An interesting aside: My scan came with "perfusion". The perfusion should show blood flows. there are less blood flows -- in the tumour area? than expected. What does this mean? No idea. Neither the surgeon nor the MRI analysis have a clear explanation.

So what does the surgeon recommend? Open it up, of course :-)

Exactly what we are expecting.

There's some discussion of why and risks.

Why? Open my head -- craniotomy -- and scrape out a bit of brain -- resection. I'm disappointed that the surgeon does not expect to "see" much. Whatever he scrapes out will be analysed by pathologists, that's where the real information is found. Especially, important: is it really a tumour? (The betting man says, Yes.)

Aside: Brain surgery does not use sharp blades. Thinking about it, the brain is soft (not just mine), the surgeon perhaps uses a butter knife. I ask Deb if one of this week's dinners can be crumbed lamb brains fried in butter... Yumm :-) I'm not sure why I thought of that.

Risks: All brain surgery is risky. This one is not especially risky.

He'll be working on a part of the brain which manages vision. He says many times, this will not fix my current vision problems. (I didn't expect it to.)

Absolute disaster could damage my vision. In that area of the brain, even shoddy surgery is unlikely to kill me. Or even vegetate me. It's vision which is at risk, and only because, well, all brain surgery (and all surgery) is risky.

Do we want to go ahead? Well, yes, we've already decided that.

Next week, or the week after? We decide, 20th May. Not immediately. I want a bit of time to get used to the idea... The surgeon says no, it's not urgent, a week or two should be fine.

We thank him and leave. Outside I double-check with Deb: is that all okay? Yes... We speak to his secretary. Sign a few forms, pay some bills... and leave. Phew!

It's just five minutes to one, the cancer doc is due to phone at one. I phone her...

Speak to her secretary, call transferred, is anyone there? oh, it's the cancer doc... typical of my confusion with this modern telephone technology :-)

The doc agrees, yes, have the surgery. Again... all as expected :-)

Deb and I go to the shops, have lunch. I can't believe it's only lunchtime -- it's been a very long day.

We do the shopping... I do some impulse buying :-)

Home again. Time to update a few people.

Just as I say, I'll be having some more brain surgery -- there's a flash of lightning and a boom of thunder! Couldn't have timed it better :-)

One thing that Deb and I have accepted, we repeat it to a few people: My cancer is aggressive. It is incurable, it is terminal. It may have been beaten down -- it will be back and it will kill me. The only question is, when?

Deb and I agree, the three years so far is far better than we originally expected.

On the other hand: where I am now is not much worse than it was a few months ago. I'm still quite healthy (except for, you know :-)

I now have some actual symptoms (loss of vision, the vision has largely come back, thanks to dex). The tumour is (most likely) back but it's in a relatively unimportant part of my brain. I still have a death sentence in my brain. But...

The surgery will discover how serious it is now. After pathology tests the cancer doc will suggest any further treatment. Not that there are many options.

I've shortened our planning horizon from 3+ years to two-plus. I may not have enough time to properly train for the Cradle Mountain Run :-) Nope, we won't be at the next rogaine, the day after the operation.

After that, though: There's still time to enjoy life :-)

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Good grief, there's more! I'll start a new post...

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"Failure is not an option. It's a lifestyle." ... per Ginger Meggs

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Dying for you to read my blog, at https://notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com/ :-)