The Story...Chapter I

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  As you can see, the cyst + the mass were the size of a tennis ball. 

When I look at the scans, the first words that come to mind are: " Ow!  Ow! Ow!"  and "No wonder my friggin' head hurt!" I can just imagine what Keith & Melissa said when the neuro people showed them my MRI the night before my surgery - probably something along the line of "Holy Shit!"  Let me know what goes through your mind after seeing this for the first time.

The odd part is that the discomfort I was experiencing was on the left side of my head.  It felt like I was wearing a hat or headband that was a little too tight - not a stabbing pain, just a consistent dull ache.  The explanation is that although the mass was in my front right temporal lobe, it was smashing my brain to the left across the mid-line as the cyst grew.  In some of the views, you can see how compressed my brain was and the difference in the right and left side is marked.

The doctors were in complete disbelief that I was not slurring my words or dragging my feet - much less not presenting any other symptoms of a neurological deficiency.  There should have been something that was "off" but I was able to perform on command: touch your nose, smile, push, pull, squeeze with your hands, etc. and answer questions.  The only symptom I had until the beginning of August was a headache I could not seem to find any relief for (whether I took Tylenol, Advil, Excedrin).

In hindsight, I now recognize a few other things were starting to happen that seemed "odd." Several of my co-workers have fans they run in their cubicles - while I sit wrapped in a blanket ;-).  I noticed that the air flow when it passed made my head hurt a little more when I was standing in their cubes.  Then the sound of the HVAC system at the office when it turned on sounded more like the whirring of a helicopter.  But by that point, my judgment was starting to be affected. and I discounted them as related to my headache.

The scary part is that the only reason I went to the emergency room on Wednesday was because my brother-in-law told me to.  He has a medical degree and moved to Michigan to open the medical school at Oakland University.  I had been conferring with him over several previous weeks about the lack of explanation for my headache.  As of that day, I was merely waiting for the appointment I had scheduled with a neurologist for Friday, August 5th.  I was referred to one when a doctor I saw at an out patient clinic on July 7th ruled out several other potential causes.  How ironic I ended up having having emergency surgery the same day to resect a metastasized brain tumor.

I sent Bob the following text from work on Wednesday morning. 

new symptom showed up sun late 

afternoon: vertigo. subsided quickly. 

came back mon afternoon.

had coworker drive me home. 

keith drove me to work on tues. 

I was fine all day. 

drove myself home tues & to work today. 

glad my neuro appt is fri. 

headache is worse than ever 

or else I am done being tolerant

& have lost all objectivity.  

r u & nancy available to come over 

4 dinner fri nite?

My phone rang immediately.  Bob told me to have someone drive me to a major medical trauma center right away.  Turned out to be a good idea.  Stay tuned for the rest of the story.