Tag Archives: doctor

Six-Month Reprieve

I want to share some positive news. I had my follow-up appointment with my neurosurgeon yesterday. Fear gripped me heading into the exam room because the radiologist’s report detailing my latest MRI included this troubling language: “Unchanged heterogeneously enhancing prominence in the right anterolateral suprasellar area, causing mass effect with deformity and right optic tract and proximal portion of the right optic nerve.”

But Dr. H., who is always sanguine, stepped into the room, shook my hand, and sat down, adjusting his glasses and mask, then quickly put me at ease. “We think we got about seventy to eighty percent of the tumor,” he said. He explained the rest—what the MRI report referred to on the right side—was the membrane of the tumor, similar to what’s left over after a balloon bursts. He said he expects the membrane to shrink and form scar tissue.

Although my vision will never go back to the way it was prior to the swelling of the tumor in recent years, I felt relieved when Dr. H. said we can resume a wait-and-see approach, meaning I need no other treatment besides another MRI in six months.

That reassurance was the best present I’ll receive during this Christmas season. Clean, safe, and grateful are the words that hovered in my head when I left the office yesterday. I believe in the power of prayer, especially the petitions made by Aunt Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun in Florida who uses the term “storming heaven” when referring to her supplications.

I am thankful to have endured my latest medical ordeal, but I also know tomorrow could bring a whole new heap of trouble. That’s why I am trying to honor my good fortune by living in the present each day. Of course, this is impossible to do consistently amid the pressures of work and family life.

But I’m trying.

Here are a couple of photos I snapped recently—two visual gifts the universe offered because I was willing to pay attention in the moment.

Snow on Branches 2023. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

Rain Speckled Night. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

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Radiation Oncology Follow-Up

I had a recent follow-up appointment with my radiation oncologist to discuss the treatment plan for the regrowth of my craniopharyngioma (pituitary tumor).

Dr. M. said the team believes Gamma Knife radiosurgery offers the best option for delivering precise, targeted radiation—without affecting nearby cranial nerves—as opposed to hitting me with five separate radiation treatments.

Gamma Knife image. UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Nothing is scheduled yet, but I recall the last time I had Gamma Knife in 2012. I remember the surgeons drilling screws in the surface of my skull and attaching a helmet that looked like an old metal macaroni strainer to my head. The procedure was quick and I had no issues recovering from it. So here’s hoping for the best. I came up with a short poem to summarize the treatment plan.

Regrowth

Tumor back.
Seeing double
In field of vision.
Radiation set.
Gamma Knife
Gonna restore
Sight and
Eradicate tumor.
Or at least that’s
The surgeon’s plan.
I’ll believe it
When two becomes
One again.

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Doctor Office Visit

Hopper-esque sunlight pours through the fifth-floor windows of an exam room in a medical office building in Syracuse. The light clings to the white walls on this Tuesday morning as I await the appearance of my neurosurgeon to give me the results of the MRI of the brain I had done earlier in the morning.

I notice the stenciling of letters on the wall directly across from me. The uplifting slogan reads: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to Dance in the Rain.” The words hold little meaning to me on this bright sunny day with highs expected in the eighties.

Words on a wall

Words on a wall

Dr. H. comes in a short time later; I rise from the chair, greet him and shake his hand. He is bald, thin, wears brown-rimmed glasses and is chewing gum. He takes a seat across from me and says, “Everything on your scan—the one you just had—is perfect. No change from a year ago.”

I ask him about residual scar tissue from the Gamma Knife surgery he performed in 2012 to remove remnants of a craniopharyngioma, a benign tumor in the sellar region of the brain, near the pituitary gland. The neoplasm was initially removed at Upstate in 1984, but it grew back and I needed follow-up surgeries in 1988 and in 2011. But it has not returned since the Gamma Knife procedure four years ago.

“It’s just scar tissue,” Dr. H. says. “Everything is clear. So we’ll just plan another MRI in a year. We’ll get you in before the winter comes.”

And so I can proclaim that I am tumor-free for another year. We have kept the craniopharyngioma at bay. And although I push the fear of its return to the outskirts of my mind, I know the tumor could sneak up again at any time. But on this morning I am thankful for the reprieve. It means no follow-up scans, no biopsies, no inpatient admission and no additional surgeries. I am grateful that I don’t need to wait for the storm to pass or learn to dance in the rain—at least for now.

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