Next Stop-BNI

I woke up bright and early on Monday morning in Barrow's Neurological Institute (BNI) intensive care unit. When I say bright and early, I mean it. Doctors start making rounds at 4:30 A.M. SHARP! It was the usual parade; neurologists, pulmonary specialist and surgeons. Then it was off to radiology for CAT scans, X-rays, and MRI’s. Larry and Jeff made it in around 9:00 A.M. My brother John from Kansas and my sister Jan from Arkansas would be coming in this morning.

Whenever a doctor or nurse comes into my room first thing in the morning, they always ask, "What day is it? Tell me where you are. What's your name? Do you know why your are here?" This is going to get really old; especially since I can't remember the name of the hospital.

My pulmonary specialist comes into the room. He tells us that I have non-small cell cancer. He asked if we were of northern European descent. Well, I had a great-grandmother named Lindquist. Everyone else is from England and France, and that was over 200 years ago. The doctor says that this type of cancer and the location of it is not necessarily smoking related. It is often associated with women of northern European descent. I stick my tongue out at my husband, “See, it’s not from smoking.” The doctor also wanted to know if I had some kind of life changing event within the past three or four years. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Yeh! A couple of them. He said often times that triggers the cancer and allows it to take hold. He also tells us that the tumor on my lung is less than 3 mm. in size, did not involve any nodes, is regular in shape and is on my right side in the top portion of the lung. Since there weren’t any nodes involved, it must have spread through the blood.

My neurosurgeon is Kris Smith. I like him right off the bat. He is pleasant and professional looking and always has a smile on his face. He wants to do the surgery right away to remove the tumor on my brain. They aren’t wasting any time here. We tell him that we want to do it tomorrow since my family is just coming in. Jeff still has some reservations about this. He thinks it’s too risky. I try to listen to everything but I finally give up because I can’t concentrate anymore. I tell Luanne to not pay any attention to them and just talk to me. Dr. Smith takes every one (except me) out of the room and shows them the MRI or CAT scan (whatever). He shows them the tumor and his procedure for removing it. It is on the left, above my ear and just to the front. This is the part of the brain that controls speech. There is a lot of swelling and edema there and that is why I am having trouble with speech and math. Basically, he is going to drill into the side of my head, insert a camera and whatever tool he's going to work with, fold the tumor over like taco and slip that baby out of there. Furthermore, he's going to do all this watching it on a TV!!! The ultimate Nintendo game!

Dr. Smith's shadow is Dr. David Brachman. I say shadow only because Dr. Brachman is shorter. He is every bit as proffesional, knowledgable and pleasant as Dr. Smith. Dr. Brachman is a oncology radiologist. I like him alot too and I will talk more about him later.

So, the surgery is set for tomorrow, Tuesday at about 1:00 P.M. Time for everyone to go home and get a good nights sleep.