The Road Ahead

Well, I promised an update after last Monday's appointment with the neurosurgeon. Good news -- I'm fully healed, and ready for reconstructive surgery! A concern and a praise at the same time, I suppose...I'm very ready for this whole ordeal to be over, but not necessarily looking forward to another major surgery -- my third one this year. But, if you know me, you know it won't slow me down. Here's the road ahead:

23 November: 1mm-cranial scan. This is like a CT, but a CT is usually done with 3mm or 5mm "slices." To reconstruct a 3-d image of my skull, they need to do one with 1mm slices...that just means a really long CT scan...probably two hours or more. They'll use the 3-d imaging from that scan to construct the prosthetic that will go where my forehead used to be.

11 December: Brain scan (MRI). Remember the "90 Days at a Time" blog? Well, my last scan was 16 September...so you can do the math. We've made it another 90 days in remission, and we need to check again to make sure the cancer is still at bay. This is basically unrelated to the infection and the reconstruction, but a significant event nonetheless.

14 December: Neurosurgery and radiation oncology consults. Basically, appointments to go over the scans and learn the results. Hopefully, we'll restart the 90-day clock!

18 December: Reconstructive surgery. They'll open me up again, place the prosthetic in, "trim to fit," and close me back up. In general, the shortest and simplest of all the surgeries I've had, but there are some potential complications and risks. If all goes well, I'm only in the hospital overnight for observation, and home that weekend.

31 December: The Fairfax Four road race! What, you thought I'd let surgery stop me from training and running? Come on...

So, there you have it! A new forehead for Christmas. There's a song there somewhere...