Brain Waves

It's official now. Summer '05 is "The Summer of The Brain."

At least for my little group of friends, loved ones, and casual aquaintances. We all know bits and pieces of QVC's story. And let me say again that I'm glad that the situation appears to be stabilized. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I hope the headaches are gone by now.

But like the old saying goes, "One swallow doesn't make a summer." Nor does one brain case. So here's the rest of the story.

Elizabeth has had an interesting little congenital condition for her whole life. No one really knew she had it until she got an MRI at 17. Basically all they told her at that point was, "If you get pregnant, you shouldn't have an epidural or any other type of spinal tap. That could cause problems with your cerebrospinal fluid and kill you."

She's continued to have brief, severe headaches from time to time, and they are often accompanied by a loss of vision. (We're talking 10-15 seconds of astonishing pain and blindness.) What's happening is that a portion of her cerebellum is enlarged, and restricts the flow of CSF. That flow serves to even out pressure differentials between the brain and spinal cord, and so when that flow is restricted or stopped, the pressure in her skull spikes hard.

Anyway, that is what she wanted to talk about with her new physician, who sent her in to get an MRI. A neurosurgeon examined that MRI, talked to her about her symptoms and told her that it would be best to operate sooner rather than later. The operation will involve enlarging the foramen magnum to allow more room for fluid flow. They'll carve out some of the bone, and graft in a piece of artificial dura to allow the brain some extra room. Oddly enough, within a few weeks the enlarged portion of her cerebellum should shrink back to a nearer-normal size and her symptoms should disappear almost immediately.

The good news is that this is a fairly routine operation, as brain surgery goes, and they won't be touching any actual brain matter. It's just a skull surgery. So there's little chance of any major complications from that.

However. . . there was something else that they noticed on the MRI. There appears to be something on Elizabeth's pituitary gland. We don't know yet if it is a cyst (treatable with medication) or a benign growth, or a cancerous tumor. She's having blood work done, and is scheduled for a high-resolution MRI focusing on the pituitary on Friday. So we'll know more perhaps as early as next weekend.

Obviously, we're praying it's not cancer. But it could very well be miraculous that she got an MRI to follow up on a known condition that also happened to catch brain cancer at an early and treatable stage. We just don't know. We're having to talk about things like writing a will, cremation vs. burial (cremation all the way), and how long do we keep someone on life support should they fall into a coma. So that's a real challenge, emotionally speaking. We just don't anticipate this sort of thing when we're in our twenties and thirties.

I'm sharing this stuff with you guys because we've known each other a long time. I'm not sharing it with many outside my family, and Elizabeth is fairly private and would prefer not to broadcast her troubles. So please respect that. If you guys are praying much these days, I'd appreciate it if you'd remember Elizabeth and pray for healing.

On a completely unrelated note, Bush and Rumsfeld could be charged with war crimes.