Consultation

On thursday (yesterday)Heather had her MRI and then in the afternoon I left work and went across the street to meet her on my lunch break. I went in with her to meet the doctor to discuss the gamma knife procedure. The doc came in and said lets go look at the scans. But Heather did not really want to look at him. I think that took the doc by surprise that a patient did not really want to see what was happening in her own brain. I explained that she was so sick in the hospital that she did not see any of them and she does not really want to see how bad her brain looks. So he gave us the news that on this MRI there are about 17 lesions he counted. Lots more than i was expecting. Luckily they are all 2 cubic cm or smaller. He explained how the gamma procedure works and the requirements to do it. You can not have too many lesions which he said 17 was a lot but not too many to do. He also said that it would only take half a day and he could treat all the lesions and it would take care of them. He would not have to cut into her head or brain at all. They put a frame on her head and attach something that looks like a spaghetti collander and the lasers shoot throught hundreds of holes but all the lasers end up hitting the same single point. It is all programmed by a computer and after it treats the first one, the computer moves the collander thing to the next lesion and fires the lasers then moves to the next etc etc. He told Heather that it is pretty aggressive but in young people who are healthy other than her cancer that is the time to be aggressive. He also said he wishes there was something like that they could do for all the disease in her body since her cancer has not been very responsive to her chemo. We just have to hope and pray we can get her cancer under control in her body so that it will not spread again to her brain after we get rid of all this.

The gamma is great cause it does not damage any of your brain tissue, it does not involve opening her up, and it is not radiation which is so bad for you. Heather has another MRI in 4 weeks as the doctor thinks the radiation is still taking effect and could improve some of the lesions. After that MRI we will formulate the plan. He already wrote the perscription for the MRI and his secretary is working on getting the authorization for the MRI and for the gamma. I hope the insurance will approve it.