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Second Neurosurgery

Very happy with my recent neurosurgery at UCSF. My recovery is going much faster than my first craniotomy last year. This new one was a double craniotomy, to remove:
  • A previously treated (cyberknife) left parietal lobe tumor that became active again
  • A new left parietal lobe tumor
  • A new right temporal lobe tumor (the largest of the three I believe, over 2cm)
It became clear the morning of Tuesday 5/24 that something was wrong at work, I was struggling to put basic sequences of tasks together like advancing from one email to the next, or ultimately using my headset phone to dial my doctors to say something was going wrong. I got admitted to the UCSF ER and they figured out fairly quickly the issue was new brain metastases. They kept me for observation thru Thursday. Then I went home and was scheduled for neurosurgery on 6/1.

I feel so much better and am recovering a lot more quickly this time than my previous craniotomy in my left occipital lobe last September. My surgeon resected everything he could see. I go back in for radiosurgery follow-up next Friday with Gamma Knife, assuming no problems from BC/BS. This would be a 16 day interval from surgery to radiosurgery (the interval at Kaiser last time was over 5 weeks).

Neurologically, I'm not walking into things on the right hand side anymore which is nice. I believe that was one of the left parietal lobe tumors. I would see things, like a parking meter, but not automatically recognize them as things I should avoid and would walk right into them. Nice not to be doing that anymore!
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