MyFoxDC

Monday July 7, 2008

5pm

Hello again. As I write this I am sitting in some nail shop my wife has dragged me into. She is making me get a pedicure. Not sure I should be disclosing this info but there it is.

Today has been an interesting day because I have had more pain today than the last few days. One of my friends suggested maybe this could be because the facial nerve which has been dormant on the left side of my face might finally be starting come out of sleeping. I sure hope so.

It has been 5 days now since I have been able to have much movement on the left side of my face and it sure is getting old. I still cannot close my left eye completely without pulling it shut withy finger. Fortunately, once I close it, it does stay shut. Also good news, my eye does not bother me as much now as it did last Thursday and Friday. I am able to keep it open and see fine through it for the most part. I am still adding eye drops every hour or so though.

As far as that pain, it is nothing severe, pretty mild overall. Sacha wants me to take some pain pills, and I have taken a few here and there but I a trying to wean myself off them as soon as possible. If I really need them I will take them but I don't feel like that is even necessary right now.

I am still not sleeping too well. I am not due to start tapering off the steroids (which are the likely culprit) until Friday so I am just going to have to deal with this. Usually it takes me about 3 hours of lying awake in bed before I doze off. The good news is that at least once I do fall asleep I seem to be getting at least 6 solid hours, so there does seem to be some progress here as well. It helps that the incision on the side of my head is healing and I am now able to sleep on that side, so I no longer wake up in pain when the left side of my head finds the pillow.

Speaking of my head, Wednesday I plan on going to a barber and getting the rest of my haircut so it is all the same length. I am getting a little tired of this "Flock of Seagulls" look I have going. I will be certain to upload some pics after I get it done.

As for the dizziness factor, nothing has changed there. I am still dizzy when I walk, though it does seem to be getting a tiny bit better each day. I am able to get around just fine; I do use a cane outside the house though.

The dizziness seems worst when I first wake up and as the day progresses I seem to get more adjusted. I expect this to continue.

Many of you have inquired about how Sacha is holding up. Both she and the baby seem to be doing great. She has been so great throughout all this; I don't know what I would do without her.

So that's the update but I have so much more to write. There are four big topics I want to write about concerning this surgery in the days and weeks ahead. The four topics are:

1) What the heck is an acoustic nueroma anyway?

2) How did I discover I had this tumor?

3) How did I decide which treatment option/hospital to pursue?

4) What was the operation/house clinic like?

I most want to write about topic #2 because I think that will be the most interesting and perhaps the most beneficial to readers. But that will have to wait. Today I am going to write on topic #4 because I want to detail everything that happened to me in la while it is still fresh in my mind.

After flying to la on Tues. June 24th, Sacha and I spent the day with a friend of the family in Santa Monica. We went to the beach and had a nice dinner before an early turn to bed.

Wednesday am we were up by 6am and off to the house ear clinic where I had a full day of testing which began bright and early at 730am.

When we arrived at house we were greeted by extremely friendly and helpful staff members who had all my paperwork ready and waiting. Within a few minutes we were escorted back into the doctors offices where our first meeting was with Dr. Lin. Dr Lin has been a resident at house for 5 years and was in his final week of residency there. This week he became a full otologyst and is moving to New Orleans to begin his own practice. I was going to be one of his last patients at house.

Dr Lin's job was to do the mini liposuction job in my surgery. I kept this quite until now but as part of the surgery doctors remove some belly fat to plug the hole in your head. I naturally asked Dr Lin if he could please take out some extra and he said everybody asks that, and that he could not (bummer).

As the first doctor to meet with me, Dr Lin also had the honor of being the one to try and talk me out of the surgery. He went over the other options (radiation, etc) available and warned me of all the negative possibilities my surgery might bring. This wasn't exactly what I was expecting right out of the gate but I guess it was the right thing.

After meeting with Dr Lin I began a battery of hearing and balance tests, which included everything from the standard beeps in each ear, to a small hose of water running through each ear. I believe I had 5 tests in all.

Midway through the testing I had my first meeting with Dr Derald Brackmann. I will go into details on Dr Brackmann and why I chose him very soon but for now know he has done over 2000 of these surgeries and is considered the best. Not one of the best. The best.

This was my first ever meeting with Dr Brackmann (we did speak many times on the phone) and I was as impressed as I could have hoped. He was very confident and comforting. Much to my dismay however, he was not committed to the surgical approach we had discussed on the phone. (Again I will get into this later, but) there are 3 different approaches for these tumors and the approach in which there's an attempt to preserve hearing is the most complicated and dangerous. Dr Brackmann told me he would not recommend trying to save my hearing unless I did well on a specific sound wave test I had yet to take. He told me we would meet again in the am to discuss the right option.

Needless to say, I was crushed. I had already made the commitment to come for the surgery, faced all the demons associated with this reality, and now there was a chance I might not even get the option of trying to save my hearing.

Fortunately, that didn't last. After finishing the remainder of my testing, I met with Dr. Marc Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz is the neurosurgeon who operated on me. He was the one who actually did the “carving” so he was just as important as Dr. Brackmann.

Dr. Schwartz told me he had a sneak peak at my sound wave test and that it looked favorable to try and save my hearing. Even so, he cautioned it was at best a 60-40 chance in favor it could be saved.

By the time my meeting with Dr, Schwartz concluded it was nearly 4pm and I had to go across the street to St. Vincent Medical Center to register and undergo a few more tests. I gave blood, urine and underwent a cardiogram before all was said and done. Finally, the day was drawing to a close.

By 6:30pm Sacha and I were on our way to a nearby hotel where we would spend our last “normal” night together before the operation. While Sacha took some time to freshen up, I took a little walk and decided to call some friends and family. I didn’t speak to anyone for very long, just long enough to update them on my happenings of the day, and tell them how important they all were to me in my life. I’ll admit I was scared.

After feeling I’d done all I could do, I rejoined Sacha and we went for a walk together, had a drink and got some dinner. Then it was back to the room for a little quiet time. We took some time to pray and talk and laugh and cry. Though, it wasn’t as tough a night as I had envisioned. I’m certain it’s because the amount of care and corner, love and prayers coming our way was tangible.

Believe it or not, I actually slept pretty well that night. Though I did wake up fairly early. I was supposed to meet Dr. Brackmann at House at 8:00 AM and I was awake before 6. When I awoke I let Sacha sleep and I got up and took some time to pray the Rosary. Again, I wasn’t as nervous as I expected.

Soon Sacha was up and it would be time to leave. But not before I took care of one last order of business. I went to I-tunes and downloaded “Baba O’Reilly” by the Who. I put on my headphones and cranked it. If I was going to be deaf on one side of my head in just a few hours I wanted to be sure I had one last chance to listen to one of the greatest songs ever invented for Stereo. If you’ve never heard this song in headphone before, it is a must!

After that, I was ready to go.

And that is where I am going to leave off for now. I will pick up on this in the next day or two. Until then, take care.