The Most Expensive Five Hours of My Life

Next Wednesday, November 25, 2009, I am scheduled to undergo Gamma Knife RadioSurgery to "kill" or "deactivate" what remains of my Acoustic Neuroma.

First things first, just to be clear, there is actually no knife. The word "knife" is in this tool's name, I think, to present the idea that the gamma rays will accomplish what used to take a real knife to do. Basically it boils down to a machine shooting some (invisible) rays into me. It is called RadioSURGERY only to differentiate it from RadioTHERAPY. Radiosurgery uses a fairly large dose of radiation to zap the tumor in one sitting, while radiotherapy uses much smaller doses to accomplish the same thing over multiple sessions. At any rate, no cutting and no bleeding takes place.

That said, it still sounds like a fairly uncomfortable experience. Ironically, probably more uncomfortable than the surgery. In the surgery phase I felt no pain DURING (since I was asleep) but there was discomfort AFTER (during recovery). With this procedure it sounds like there will be discomfort DURING but none AFTER. I should be back to normal the very next day. Here's how it's supposed to go: (Note to Alvin and Alan - this is where you stop reading!)

First they take this metal frame and literally screw it onto my head (probably a little bleeding there, but nothing major). This frame will ensure that when they need my head absolutely immobile, it will be. Then they take this gadget taken from the pyramids of Egypt, left behind by aliens millions of years ago, and stick it onto my brain through my right nostril. Ok, joke lang that last statement. :-) With the frame attached to my head, they then take one final MRI and use the scans to plot the position of the tumor relative to my head and the frame so they can input these coordinates into the Gamma Knife machine. This tells the machine where to "shoot" and how large of a "bullet" to use. All this will take about five hours, and with the price tag for this procedure, this just about makes next Wednesday morning the most expensive five hours of my life..