Surgery, etc

The surgery was successful, as evidenced by the fact that I’m here and posting a new entry. The entire, very large, tumour, was successfully removed from my brain. Hurray!

There’s only one minor complication. I’m apparently partially blind. Would you ever have thought that you could be partially blind and not realize it? I seem to have lost about 40% of my field of vision. Imagine the eye as a big circle and divide it into four quadrants. Well, I can’t see anything in the bottom right quadrant and I can see approximately the top half of the upper right quadrant. Ironically, my eyesight (for distance) is almost perfect.

Pierre keeps teasing me about being “blind”. He wonders if I’ll qualify for one of those special parking stickers.

On a related note, my last Pap test found “irregular cells” and an ovarian lump that my doctor didn’t like. Sigh. I’ve had a benign breast lump removed, a benign brain tumour (as benign as a brain tumour can be) removed, and now they find suspicious lumps on my ovaries? Can I be three times lucky?

Baby Boy started walking today. For the past month, he’s been taking two or three running steps and then sitting or falling. Today, he just started … walking.  It was quite amazing to watch, as he became more and more steady on his feet as the day went on. He’s so wonderful. Pierre was happy that he had the day off, so he was home with us when Baby Boy decided to start walking.

Update …

I’ve been distracted and not up to creating blog posts.  You’ll understand in a minute.

The doctor sent me to have a CT scan because of what *appeared* to be a TIA.

The technician didn’t come out of the booth right away.  Another lady came and helped me up, and asked me to please sit in the waiting room for a few minutes.  She said it was in case I had a reaction to the contrast dye, which didn’t make any sense.  If I had had a reaction, it would have been right away.

A few minutes later, the technician came out with tears in her eyes.

Apparently, she found a 4.5 cm tumor in my brain.

A week later, I had an MRI.  The tumor is about the size and shape of a chicken egg.  It does NOT seem to be cancerous.  However, the surgeon wants it out of my head as soon as possible.  There’s no such thing as a completely safe brain tumor.

I will be in the hospital for about a week and a half, and the first few days of that will be in a special ICU, with no visitors.  My brain surgery will be the first week of June.