The Neuro Visit

Hi everyone!

It's me, Jenny!  {Waves}  I'm finally feeling up to writing (more on why that is later), so I thought I'd pick up the story where Kevin left off.

So, the visit with Dr. Shapiro was pretty standard.  I was a little nervous, and of course Kevin was a lot nervous.  Kevin didn't come right out and say that he thought I would need surgery, but he did say that he thought the Doc would put me on anti seizure medicine.  I didn't really know why, but I've been kinda in the dark throughout this whole ordeal, so I let his comments slide.  I was seriously thinking that there's no way I was going to need to have surgery.

I was wrong.

After about 5 minutes with Dr. Shapiro, and conducting some simple neuro tests (walking with feet in front of the other and all that jazz), he came out with:

"It's a pretty big one (meningioma) and it needs to come out."

To which I responded with a laugh, "You've got to be kidding me!"

No joke.  He proceeded to give us an overview of the procedure and answer the many questions we threw out at him.  I'm wondering how I'm going to tell my parents.  UGH, yet another health-related thing to deal with. My poor husband.

(Side note: I do have ankylosing spondilitis and Crohn's Disease and have had some really, really bad times since 2000.  BUT, what's so ironic is that both of these conditions are under control right now and I'm probably the healthiest and fittest of my life.  So, I must have really bad genes or really, really bad karma, or maybe both!)

So, we waited about 10 minutes while Dr. Shapiro and his nurse set things in motion.  First, we had to pick the date of the surgery.  I could have done it at the end of January, but we were also given the option of Feb. 12th.  We took the 12th for many reasons, especially logistics of getting my parents up here, and frankly just to give me time to prepare myself mentally and physically for the operation.

Dr. Shapiro indicated that I would probably be in the hospital for 2-3 days post-surgery and then a recovery of 6-8 weeks.  6-8 weeks!  This whole thing is getting ridiculous!  Can I not just ever get a simple sinus infection?!

So, I left with instructions for getting a Steath MRI and blood work in preparation for surgery. I also left with a script for Keppra, an anti seizure medicine....