one more hurdle

  So many of you know that I had an oncology appointment yesterday, where I thought we were going to learn the plan and the schedule for treatment.  We had a long talk with Dr. Lu, who is totally wonderful. He explained that he and Dr. Aye want to be very aggressive and shrink the tumor as much as they can as quickly as they can. To do that we are looking at a combination of chemo and radiation - as much as I can stand.
Before they start though, they need too be sure there is no cancer in my brain. I want to stress that both Mark and I wrote down that Dr. Lu said they have nor reason to believe there is cancer there, they just need to be sure.
This machine is an MRI. Holy smokes what an experience -- I hardly know how to describe it (although I do think it is miraculous science).  You lie down, have a cage placed over your head and neck to keep you still, and then are moved into the heart of the machine. Once the magnets start doing their thing to create the images the noises are incredible. If you have ever seen the Blue Man Group live - try to imagine them playing their weird discordant instruments on speed. It bongs, and beeps, and sounds like hammering wood, then hammering metal. It screams like a siren, and bloops like a hot pot at Yellowstone. And there is no predictability - no more rhythm to it than Emerson had playing the mixing bowl and Tupperware with the spoon last weekend.
The sweet pea tech put noise cancelling headphones on me and played country music, that I could catch snatches of now and then. I was told the MRI would last 40 minutes and what saved me and made it doable for me was math; I heard a country song lasts between 2:55 and 3:45, on average. So I counted the songs by fisting and moving my fingers out and then multiplying the number of fingers by the high and the low end of the song range. I was almost at the end of my ability to hold still, when I got to what I thought should have been 40 minutes. And I was only off by 1 song!!
I am not sure when we will know the results....

I will do one more post today with what we think is the schedule for next week. From the bottom of our hearts, Mark and I want you to know how much the e-mails and cards and other stuff means to us.  Right now you are as Lou Rawls used to sing, "The wind beneath our wings".