The magical mystery tour…

Brad has made it out of surgery and is happily watching Fox News in the Neuro ICU.  They will keep him here overnight to make sure things are progressing properly and there is no hemorrhaging – which appears to not be a problem at all.  Now that you know the most important thing (he is doing well) here is the full story.

Brad and I arrived at the hospital just before 5:30am this morning.  He was first in the tube at radiology for a Profusion + MRI + Mapping.  This basically provides the surgeon with a clear visual of what is going on upstairs – blood flow, swelling, enhancements, etc.  Ideally they can aim at a more questionable area in the scan to secure a tissue sample that would provide the answers as to what specifically we are treating.  The challenge is, Brad doesn’t have much swelling, enhancements or blood flow in the area – another indicator that this is treatment effect and not tumor activity (but we continue to be the eternal optimists).

After a four hour surgery, Brad emerged with 10 shiny staples and his favorite accessory – an ear to ear grin.  We reviewed the surgery with Dr. Waziri shortly thereafter.  With 12-14 tissue samples (these are tiny samples mind you) he does not think we got anything but necrosis.  Necrosis is like dead tissue caused from the treatments.  Please note, nothing is definite or factual until we have a solid pathology report which takes 7 days (we get ours on 6/25).  However, Doc Waz’s best guess is the samples did not look like active tumor tissue.  Brad and I think this is great – sure beats the alternative.  There is some concern/frustration about the fact (or the lack of facts) to treat Brad.  There is no cookie cutter method to his case.  We know there are some cancer cells up there, but where they are and how dangerous they are continues to be a mystery.  For now, we are relived to know there is not a cause for alarm.  The million dollar question of treatment effect versus tumor activity will continue, but this is nothing new to us.

Brad is feeling good.  He is sitting up at the moment devouring a parfait and a PB&J.  It will be a while before he is back to his usual tricks…although he has already started harassing nurses.  We anticipate being out of the hospital tomorrow, and bunking up at a hotel.  Come Friday we will head for the high country to enjoy a nice weekend at home.

We cannot thank you all for your omnipresent prayer, positive energy, and kind words.  Each and every call, text, and email means the world to us.  We are very blessed to have you in our lives.  It definitely makes this journey easier.  Thank you.

I will aim to update tomorrow as  we get some more information from the docs.  Have a good evening!

Love to all,

Laura & Brad