I was probably one of the merry few who looked forward with pleasurable anticipation to brain surgery. To be absolutely truthful, I did have a couple of 5am attacks of "What if....." (what if I bleed to death...?) but I was able to reassure myself very quickly that Allan Taylor is not only the best skull-base neurosurgeon around in SA and one of the best in the world - but he is a neurovascular surgeon and simply will not let me bleed to death!
So I was in for a nearly 8-hour op, during which time the anaesthetist found that I was allergic to opiates, and the surgeons discovered that the tumour was a meningioma (rather than an accoustic neuroma as first suspected) only once they had opened the skull, which meant that they were now not entirely sure of its point of attachment as they began surgery so that Allan as lead surgeon did the entire 7 hours - an epic in itself. Then there was some recovery time in hospital (to still the whirling world and re-focus the double vision), some more recovery time at home (appetite! No pain!) - and I was set to go.
The anaesthetist's remark that I was allergic to opiates triggered in me my version of how young Samuel Taylor Coleridge lost most of his nascent poem, Kubla Khan, including just who the Person from Porlock actually was and what was the manner of his business. In writing the story, I was led into completing Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" (and - as far as I am aware - the first ever historical attempt to do this, I might add, unless one were to count Coleridge's own abortive efforts over the rest of his life) so that it became a nearly 400 line poem in the early Coleridge gothic style. It was a highly enjoyable undertaking that took me three months (given that I had composed almost no poetry before and certainly no poem of this length before). The e-book of the short story and long poem can be found on the internet as "Col's Phantasm Speaks".
Awkward tumour!!! Because it had insisted on obstructing some of the lower cranial nerves and making a nuisance of itself by sitting in the jugular bulb where it could not be safely winkled out, besides trying to make a getaway from the skull through the jugular foramen using the jugular vein as a fireman's pole, it needed to be zapped another way.
This happened in late 2011 when I was given stereotactic radiosurgery. In this process, high energy radiation is delivered to the fragment in such a way that the beams are shaped to the exact volume and shape of the tumour remnant. Interestingly, I was far more concerned beforehand about the prospect of radiation than I had been about the prospect of surgery - but all was well. I got to feel what it was like for good folk such as The Man in The Iron Mask and Hannibal Lector - though my thermoplastically shaped head mask was rather more elegantly shaped and they would have done a better job of keeping Lector from being a nuisance if he had a mask like mine - especially once it was being worn and was bolted to the treatment table! One cannot move a millimetre. But then again, one would not want to. I wanted that beam to go exactly to where it was targeted and not a millimetre on either side! (Actually, the machine is programmed to shut down entirely if the beam wavers off target by a millimetre).
Snazzy, custom-made mask!
Red outlines the bit that will be zapped.
Yellow and Green are bits that must be avoided at all costs if I still want to see afterwards!
Me and the team and a couple of visiting doctors afterwards.
The massive headache kicked in a few hours later!
Then a long two year wait......... (during which time, among other things, I wrote two short stories involving a whole load of sheep and quantum physics jokes)
Late 2013 - nasty jugular tumour fragment seems convincingly to have died off! Hooray!!!
But....
Did I mention the tiny and insignificant tumour fragment that had to be left in the inner ear canal after surgery? No? Well it seems it did not like being ignored. It correctly figured that it had been considered as being of no account merely because of its size, awkward position and probable lack (at the time) of adequate nourishment. Determined to make the team sit up and take notice, it has managed to treble in size in the last 3 years and, even as I write, is doing a slow motion meningioma crawl out of the inner ear canal, heading off to push the brain stem around, as fast as it can grow. Since it crawls along at a leisurely 3mm per year, we are even now preparing to head it off at the pass. Yup - you guessed it! The little crittur has earned a stereotactic radiosurgery operation all of its own. The experts are even now preparing for it ("Bring on the sharks with lasers on their heads!").
Then it will be another two year wait .....
Can't wait to see what I might write!
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