Surgery Prep

Preparing for Surgery

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

We spent most of Tuesday at the hospital, filling in forms and doing pre-surgical stuff for Thursday‘s surgery.
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As part of the process, Michele had a detailed MRI performed. We met with Dr Kit Fox, the surgeon, to discuss the results.

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It appears that the original surgical site is stable and Dr Fox plans to look at it, but not touch it during surgery. With no change in months, he thinks that the contrast area we were worried about is most likely scar tissue.

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{ Editor’s note: Doctors do not like to call cancer “cancer” in an MRI. They like to call cancer “contrast area” or “area of concern.” }

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The new area of concern, a few centimeters (an inch) in front of the prior site has grown at a tremendous rate--perhaps doubling in size during the past few weeks.

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Dr Fox intends to remove the "frontal tip" of Michele’s left temporal lobe--a volume of at least 30 cc but less than 50 cc. A quick scaling of two MRI slices looked like the maximum dimensions of the contrast area were 3cm x 3.5cm x 5 cm. (1.2 inches by 1.4 inches by 2 inches.) If all of her circuits are in the right spots, Dr Fox does not believe that he would remove any critical tissue. He believes that he will be able to remove the entire visible tumor.

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The plan is to have the surgery early Thursday morning and be home Sunday. I plan to post updates on this blog rather than trying to send e-mail’s all day long.

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Best,

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Robert