The Brain Scans

July 29, 2010

I am totally spaced out right now but desperately want to get this out so I will plow ahead hoping I don’t have too many typos or grammatical errors.

As you know, yesterday I went in for a brain MRI.  I don’t know how many people were praying for me but it HAD to have been many because I was totally at peace.  No nerves, no anxiety, completely calm and not even afraid of the needle.  It was sunny outside (which sadly, has been an enormous rarity this summer) and I was feeling super positive and strong and honestly pretty confident that all was ok.

Part of the reason I was ok was because I read this before I went in for my appointment...

“You wonder sometimes why you are permitted to make mistakes in your choice when you sought so truly to do My Will in the matter.  To that I say, it was no mistake...all your lessons cannot be learned without difficulty, and this was needed to teach you a lesson.  Not to him who walks on, with no obstacles in his way, but to him that overcometh is the promise given.”  (God Calling, A.J. Russell)

I still get chills as I read it.  If I’ve made the wrong decisions along the way, it’s been purely accidental.  I’ve work so diligently on listening to God’s direction and I’ve always had Reed’s agreement.  I needed to hear this yesterday.  It was literally EXACTLY what I needed to hear.

Anyway, I don’t have the same tech issues at this facility as I do the other one so I wasn’t even concerned about that.  As a matter of fact, the techs at this place should be giving classes for “how to properly treat a patient” because they are amazing.  Gentle, understanding, polite.  What a concept. 

But no matter how great a tech is, they simply cannot change the outcome of a scan.  And mine were bad....really bad.  (Wow, this is much harder to retell than I thought it would be.)  I have 10 or so new lesions in my brain.  One is on my brain stem.  I will be going back in tomorrow for an MRI on my spine to see if there is any cancer in my spine or spinal fluid.  At this point, the “Tumor Board” does not believe there is any cancer in my fluids but if there is, than it’s also in the fluid surrounding my brain...not good. 

Dr. Duma (my neurosurgeon) and the Tumor Board are recommending Whole Brain Radiation.  Barf.  I have been begging God to speak to me in a loud undeniable tornado-like way so that I don’t make the wrong decision.  To those who may think, “Just do what the doctor says, it’s only radiation.” please don’t go there until you’ve walked in my shoes.  Many of these decisions are much harder to make than they appear on the surface.  This is one of those.  This one is super hard for me for reasons I’m not willing to make public right now.  Maybe later.

However, I am going in tomorrow for a consultation with the radiation oncologist so we’ll see.  What I know is that it would be at least 15 days (in a row minus weekends) of radiation to my brain.  And I know that I have to have a special mask made.  Nausea, hair loss, fatigue are all involved too.  Anybody remember Chernobyl?  I know this isn’t the same but...it’s still a lot to take in.

So, that’s my day tomorrow.  Whole brain radiation consult at 12:15 and spinal MRI at 2:00.  Thankfully we have a fun evening planned or I might just choose to sit in a ball curled up on my couch and pout.  Not a good place for me to be right now.

Oh, and yesterday ended on a positive note of a movie, filet mignon and cake...chocolate and carrot!!