Brain Surgery

Well I had Brain Surgery yesterday, as amazing as that is to think about! Everything went really well, I just have a very sore head!

This first photo is right after I got my head frame on. They put 4 shots in my head to numb the spots where the pins would hold the frame in. WOW..that hurt! Really, really hurt. When the Neurosurgeon tightened the frame with a screwdriver I just kept saying "ouch, ouch ouch" because the pressure on my head was so bad...even with local anesthetic! This plastic dome had holes in it and they did a lot of measuring by putting rods in the holes in the helmet.

Here you can see me with just the head frame. I wore this four about 5 hours yesterday. And it is only being held up by the 2 pins in my forehead and 2 pins in the back of my head....ouch.....and yes the pins are digging into my skin so if you are squeamish don't look too closely. Believe me..i could feel the pins digging into my head. But the goal was that the frame can't move..and once it was on..it didn't move!

This is the Gamma Knife machine and the headpiece that my brain went into during surgery. There are 201 holes in there and they had radiation beams coming into my head from those holes. See the metal slaps behind the headpiece?? That is where entire body went into the machine! Yep, it doesn't look very big but the table moved me into the machine for the treatment..pretty amazing stuff. Even though I'm claustrophobic I opened my eyes as I went into the machine. I figured, "How often will I get to have brain surgery? I need to just look and see what its like in here!" I was so proud of myself!! For my morning MRI I didn't take Valium this time--last time I did--so I'm feeling very good about conquering fears!

Here I am right before I went into the machine. You can see the physicist setting the final calculations for my treatment. After he was done I went into the machine once, came out to get different head brackets attached to my initial frame, and went back into the machine for more radiation. They treated the tumor in sections this way. After about 30 minutes of Gamma Knife Surgery in the actual machine.....my surgery was done!

Too bad it took 5 hours from start to finish........getting my IV/meds, fitting for the Head Frame, having the MRI scans done, waiting for analyzing of the MRI's, waiting for the team to draw up the plans for my treatment and then finally having the surgery done! I was so grateful to get that head brace off!! Wow!! I'm doing well though---still have a sore head, I'm sure that'll take a few days to ease up. All in all I'm doing really well though! Thanks to everyone for all your love and prayers!

Hugs, Heidi