The Tumor

After arriving at Primary Children's Hospital we met with Dr.Riva-Cambrin a Neuro-surgeon who showed us the images from the MRI. This picture I took on my phone shows the Tumor in the center of the spine going up to the brain stem. It is just to the right and up from the arrow on the screen. YES, that whole big thing!

He said the tumor was large and could not be in a worse location. Also that the surgery "is about as complicated as they get." He recommended removal as soon as possible, but he said he wanted to pull together his "A team". At that point they had been working to get every one's schedules worked out for more than 2 hours, but were shooting for first thing the next day. There would be 10+ people including 3 surgeons, the anesthesiologist, nurses, and a team that would be monitoring the signals down the spinal cord to alert the surgeon if they got close to nerves. About an hour later we were told that they had opened an O.R. and would be able to operate the next morning.