Perfect.

I went in this morning for my 6-month post-surgery MRI and then met with my neurosurgeon an hour or so after finishing the scan. To say that I've been anxious about this appointment would be the grandest, most extreme, most exceptionally ginormous understatement ever.

I had my one year heart follow-up appointment last week, and while all is fine, it didn't have the "it looks perfect, you never have to come back" result that I was kind of counting on. The cardiologist who did my ASD closure last year retired at the beginning of the year, so I saw brand new techs and a brand new cardiologist at a brand new hospital this time. After having completely amazing care that I trusted entirely with my old cardiology folks, it was really hard to feel completely confident in what these new people were telling me. My heart looks great -- good shape, good size, good flow, and so on. I've watched enough of my own echocardiograms over the past year or so, though, that I knew as I was being scanned last week that the ASD closure device hadn't healed completely. Indeed, the cardiologist said there's still a small amount of blood that's leaking into that next chamber, meaning the tissue in my heart muscle hasn't fully grown over my device yet. The verdict was that, ultimately, this really wasn't that big of a deal... he wants me to come back in a year to have it re-checked and see if it's fully healed at that point. If not, we'll just keep an eye on it yearly to make sure that that little bit of blood leakage isn't causing any pressure-induced damage to my heart. While it seriously is not a big thing, it felt awful and scary and just wrong because I had been so bent on this being the easy appointment and today (le brains) being the terrifying appointment. I figured that if the simple appointment wasn't perfect, that could only mean that my neuro follow-up would be a swift and sudden death sentence (I'm only exaggerating the ridiculousness of my thought process a little bit here...).

I arrived at the MRI office this morning at 9:10 or so, all ready to fill out the loads of paperwork they require each time you have a scan (nope, still haven't had an evening gig as a welder in the past 6 months, but thanks for asking) and hoping that if I was there a bit early, they'd get me into the tube earlier than the scheduled 9:30. Obnoxiously enough, there was another patient in the MRI at that point and, from what I could hear from the waiting room, this kind sir was having some serious issues following the direction to stay freaking still during his scan, so his took a LONG time. No doubt seeing the quickening pace of my bouncing foot, the woman at the front desk finally at least let me change into my super sexy scan get-up so I felt like I was doing something instead of just sitting around, but I ended up not actually being called back for my scan until almost 10:00 (almost 40 minutes after I had gotten there... bah!). I then got to spend a lovely 45 minutes in the tube. While it's certainly not an enjoyable process, I usually don't have any huge issues with having MRIs, but I was so keyed up and anxious about the results this morning that the first set of scans (about 35 minutes) seemed to take fucking forEVER and I had to focus really intently on my breathing and not totally losing it in there. Luckily, they give you huge headphones (because MRIs are wicked loud) and you get to request what music to listen to -- so I could at least visualize myself driving around and belting out Brandi Carlile while I was stuck in there. After the first set, they came in and gave me the lovely gadolinium contrast injection and then after another 10ish minute set of scans, I was done.

After the scan, I made my way through the mess of construction and crazy hospital hallways (which included passing signs directing people towards the Neuro ICU and Neuro Acute Care Unit, both of which I spent several fun-filled days in in January) and down to the Starbucks, where I met up with Emilie and we waiting around, with lots of toe-tapping, until it was time to find our way back up to the Neurosurgery office.

(Is it making you crazy, dear reader, that I'm giving every godforsaken detail of the morning - using epic run-on sentences no less - rather than just getting right to the point and telling you what my surgeon SAID?! Uh huh. Imma make you suffer too because this is exactly what my snails pace of an impatient morning was like.)

After getting called back and going through routine vitals checks and all that jazz, Emilie tried to distract me as much as possible with goofy stories and the like until my freak genius wonderful amazing human being of a neurosurgeon came into our room..... (and yes, I still get downright excited when I see him. I don't think you can't not absolutely adore the dude who plucked a tumor out of your brain). As is typical -- and I haaaate this -- he hadn't seen my scans from earlier that morning yet, and so he sat down at a desk next to me and pulled the scans up on the computer screen (which I couldn't see from where I was sitting).

And thus began the 120 second agony of trying not to pass out while my sweetly stoic surgeon sat silently staring at my scans (I'm really pleased with myself for the unintentional alliteration that just happened. Nerd what?).

He stared at one screen.

Then he clicked the mouse ten million times and looked over at the other screen.

Then he looked back at the first screen.

Then he looked back to the second screen again.

Then he rested his head on his hand while staring some more.

All the while, silent.

[For SERIOUS, friends, this is what it's like... you're completely convinced that this little asshole piece of freaky tissue and brain goo is making a reappearance in your skull and you just have to sit there knowing that your surgeon can SEE something (or not!) and wait for him to speak. Mothereffing maddening doesn't even come close.]

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

And then he spoke.

"It looks perfect."

And then, I think, I took a breath.

Le brain. looks. PERFECT. He said it several more times, and then said that it was so well-healed that he was having a hard time even finding the spot where it had been! After several more minutes of playing around with the images, he was able to find the open space in my cerebellum and he asked
Emilie and I if we wanted to come over and see it. (Um, hell to the yes I want to see that shit, son.)

Remember back to the calm, relaxing, lovely day before my surgery (oh how the sarcasm drips) and what Trent looked like then:

And as of this morning, this is where we are:

That itty bitty tiny little black dot that's circled is where Trent used to be. When you compare it to the image above, you can easily see the MASSIVE improvement in the shape, size, and overall appearance of my cerebellum. It actually looks like a cerebellum now instead of a structure just being squished by the tumor and cyst. You can also see how it's actually taking up the space in my head where and how it's supposed to, rather than being crunched towards my skull and down towards my spinal column.

Because the tumor was buried pretty deeply in my cerebellum, getting to it was (I'm told) the most challenging part of the surgery (rather than the removal being particularly crazy, as is the case with a lot of folks whose tumors aren't fully encapsulated by a cyst). You can see the tissue damage to my cerebellum (i.e., where they cut through tissue in order to gain access to the tumor) in this image from this morning:

That dark line is where they went through the tissue and the dark hole at the end is where the tumor and cyst were. It's kind of insane to me that I can have that much visible tissue damage in my tiny little cerebellum and have absolutely NO motor disturbances whatsoever right now. Brains are so damn cool.

That, my friends, is a pretty f-ing brain right there. A PERFECT, tumor- and cyst-free brain. Bam.

After the excitement of looking at these images and having my neurosurgeon explain them to me, he said another absolutely beautiful sentence: "I really don't see any reason why we would need to do any more scans for this. I'll come talk to you any time you want to come in, but I don't need to see you again."

I'm sorry what? Done with neurosurgery what?!

TRUTH.

I mentioned the vision issues I was having and, much to my surprise and happiness, he said that he though I was just experiencing a painless migraine (and he said he gets them too!), that he wasn't concerned about it, and that if it wasn't interfering with my life (happening MANY times a month, etc.) that he didn't see any reason why I would need to follow-up on that either. So for real... I'm just DONE.

He checked out my incision and my "skull hole" (which I told him I used as a party trick now, which he and his nurse seemed to get a kick out of) and said that, while I definitely have a "soft spot" now, it looked like it was healing really well. (He also made sure to remind me that despite the fact that it's been 6 months, he cut a hole in my skull, left it there, AND cut straight through a ton of muscle, so it's definitely still in the healing process!) He seemed downright thrilled with the physical improvements I've had since surgery (no nausea, fewer headaches, no muscle weakness, hugely increased muscular stamina when exercising, no daily lightheadedness) and my wonderfully stoic little surgeon man was all smiles as he walked me out the door. Likewise, his nurse (who I also adore) said that she hoped I would check in periodically with them... and that perhaps I'd even see them if/when I'm there for clerkship hours  during my neuropsychology training, but otherwise, I was outta there.

Relief doesn't even begin to describe it. It's 5:30 and all of this went down between 9am and noon today and I'm JUST now starting to calm down enough to not be a total shaky, giddy mess of happy. 

I'm going to go out for ice cream this evening to celebrate and then, I can only imagine, I'm going to sleep so well and dream of perfect, ecstatic, dancing, tumorless brains.

Kind of like this: http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-1111516-stock-footage-brain-dancing.html