So yesterday was the dreaded Gamma Knife "surgery". Quick explanation, or at least how I understood it. Step one: put your head in a box. Step two: Take an MRI (of your head) in the box... and then they use the high resolution photos to locate the tumor(s) with x,y,z coordinates on a virtual 3D grid contained by the box. Then they place you in the gamma knife machine, which shoots 201 individual beams of radiation at your head. All of the beams converge at one point in a ball of high intensity radiation. And if it is successful hopefully hitting and annihilating the tumor it is targeted at.
So 6:30am yesterday morning, after forcing myself to stay up all night in hopes of sleeping through the whole procedure, my mom picked me up outside my house, with a Nugget Market croissant (the best.) I arrived at UCDMC Radiology at 7am, I was nervous, and a little delirious from lack of sleep. There was an elderly woman ahead of me, I thought to myself, "Why?" If I was that age, why would I put myself through this? I'm sure it would be a different story if I was that age. They called her back, and 20 minutes later I watched her rolled by in a wheelchair with a frame attached to her head. It didn't look so bad. She didn't look traumatized. I guess the that's one of the things that comes with age. My name was called.


I was taken to what looked like a converted supply closet crammed with a counter of supplies, a wheelchair, two doctors, and a nurse waiting for me. I had applied numbing cream to my forehead a few hours before, and one of the nurses applied some to the back of my head when I arrived. They cleaned off the sites, swabbed on some iodine, and fitted the frame over my head. They then injected me with a numbing agent, which they said would be the worst part (lies). The worst part was next, when they started to crank down on the screw drivers, and I could feel the spinning sensation of threads boring into my skin and then skull. The pressure was unbearable, my stomach immediately turned, and my croissant from earlier was now in my lap. The doctors continued to crank their tools as the nurses cleaned me up. They fitted a plexi box over the frame now attached to my head, and jotted down some measurements. I threw-up one more time (this time I had a catch basin), and it was off to the MRI room. I was loaded into the loud knocking, pinging, vibrating machine. This part was no biggie, I have a MRI every 2-3 months. This one was a little different from those, I was told, in that is it was higher resolution. They warned me of the possibility of finding tumors with these images that they hadn't seen with the others.


I went in for one volatile tumor, or so I thought. After the doctor evaluated the high resolution images, he found eight points he wanted to hit. 6 were old tumors (including the one that prompted this action) that the doctor described as more "plump" than they had been. And then there were 2 small new tumors that these new images picked up (putting my total brain met count to 15, I believe?) So the procedure was going to be long, 4 hours, and remember that sleep I was planning on getting during? Yeah, not gonna happen. Between each 20 to 30 minute blast of radiation, they needed to pull me out change helmets, and move my head to different positions. I did get about an hour of sleep in the few hours while we waited, between getting the MRI, and going to the gamma knife.


All in all, it wasn't that bad. They played CD's and Pandora for me, and in between shots, the docs would come in to make adjustments, and we would talk about the music. The last song Pandora chose for us to enjoy was by Dead Mou5e, or so I was informed by one of the doctors who is a fan. An upbeat electronic piece that sent me out in a much better mood than when I came in.

I was happy to get the frame off. For the rest of the night I was in deep fried vegetative state, but after some food, some painkillers, and some sleep, I feel back to normal. Thanks to all who sent good energy my way, keep it up, I feel it!