In which the clouds part a little.

Today was my consultation with Neurosurgeon #2, which was somewhere between a second opinion and a specialist for the specialist. Today's doctor specializes in both this type of tumor and surgeries that involve the skull and bone work -- given that both of these things apply to me, NS#1 handed me off to him for a longer consultation.

Despite having ominous forebodings all morning, I allowed myself some hope when he walked in and looked like a younger version of the man who led my New Warrior Training Adventure 12 years ago.

The summary is this: we got a lot of potentially good news. Here's the list --

1) He doesn't think I'll lose function on the eye. He has rarely if ever seen that occur in this type of tumor with this placement. It's possible, but he considers it very unlikely.
2) My recovery time could be shorter than we were originally told, which is good because I do not have any short-term disability and we're going to be down a paycheck while I'm out. We thought six weeks originally; he's saying it could be three to four weeks instead.
3) He does not think the image on the MRI that runs along the right side of my head is a 'tail' off the tumor. He thinks it's a blood vessel. Again, we can't be completely sure due to the limitations of MRI technology, but...

He also told us -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- he wants us to think of this as less brain surgery and more skull and eye surgery. If things go the way he thinks they will go, we'll never enter the brain. We'll skip along its surface, yes, but never actually visit Grey Matter Village. He does not think the tumor is in the brain at all, but is restricted to the dura and ocular cavity. I also finally understood what NS#1 meant when he said the tumor was 'in the bone of my eye socket'; the bone itself is not tumorous, but the tumor has punched through the bone and is growing into the eye socket. That's why my eye is popping out; it's being pushed out of its socket from behind.

(My inner 11-year-old boy thought this was awesomely gross and incredibly cool.)

The surgery is still scheduled for January, tentatively. Next step is a consult with the osteoplastic surgeon on November 19th. After that, there will probably be a CT scan, possibly a consult with an ophthalmological surgeon, and then going back to NS#1 and NS#2 for some nuts and bolts planning.

More details, friends and loved ones, as they become available.