Surgery Final Details

This is Dan,

I have removed Jess from her phone and laptop in an attempt to minimize the vast amount of stress she is dealing with. She had a few Dr appointments today, along with finalizing everything necessary for her surgery tomorrow, took their toll on her. The stress that she is under is tremendous and even before todays activities it has effected her greatly. Her body temperature was a full degree below the normal range, which the Dr says can happen when people are in high stress situations. One of her eye lashes actually turned white over night. These are just a couple of examples to illustrate the reasons I have chosen to remove Jess from the outside world and allow her to focus on herself, as much as is possible anyway. We have been overwhelmed with support and love sent our way, and I wanted everyone to know that any lack of response from Jess is because of my wishes of her. Thank you for your understanding.

Tomorrow Jess is scheduled to begin the surgical process about 7:15 with the actual surgery scheduled to begin at 7:30. If everything goes accordingly, Jess should be finishing up with the surgery around 1:30pm and we will get an update (and hopefully get to see her) an hour or two after that. She asked me to let you know so that if you wished to send her your thoughts, prayers, love (or any form of support) this might be a good of a time as any. We truly appreciate all the support everyone has given us, thank you.


The blog will be update periodically by either myself or Jess's parents. We will attempt to keep everyone informed as best as possible but priority one is taking care of Jess so please give us some patience.

Even if Just for Today, We Persevered

Each moment bleeds into the next, with so many responsibilities, so many tasks to complete. It's exhausting. But, today, we did it! This morning, it took walking around the UCLA campus to different departments, a lot of explaining, and some phone calls, but we completed our mission. Thank you to everyone who offered their assistance, and appointments, I didn't see all those until later, but it ended up working out! You guys are AWESOME.

Sometimes in life, no matter how creative, and persistent, you get, you run out of time and options, and I'm just thrilled that we were able to fulfill this need, this desire. 

I completed the pre-op MRI this evening at a UCLA alternative location (Santa Monica). Same style, 3 tesla machine, which was important to me, because I want my radiology reports to match. MRI machines can have different strengths (ex: 3 tesla vs 1.5 tesla), also they can have different amounts of slices (ex: 1mm, 2mm, 3mm vs 4mm). My goal is to keep everything as standard as possible between scans so that they're easier to compare. Anyway, they were able to facilitate the same pre-op scan that was scheduled for Thursday. The functional MRI is still slated for Thursday afternoon, which will determine if I'll need to do an awake craniotomy or if I just get to take a sexy little horror movie nap.

My relief is palpable, if not temporary, for the stress of tomorrow's cognitive and competency testing which will be several hours of mental acrobatics and interviewing. These test are a baseline for when I get out of surgery, to compare any possible deficits. That way they'll know what kind of assistance I may need (physical, language, and/or occupational therapy). 

Wearing Resilience socks, thinking about all the other patients out there in my same shoe....er.....socks?

I'm bone tired, but elated that I was able to follow my intuition, and find some answers in all of this madness. I'm not expecting a miracle of healing (although I never rule anything out), but I am a tangible person who needs explanations and information to feel comfortable about big decisions. 

I understand that I am living with brain tumors up in this noggin'. I'm not pretending anything otherwise, but I feel incredibly capable, and healthy, and before I can comfortably sacrifice my body to the table, I have to feel assured. Even though this is my fourth brain surgery, it has not gotten any easier. In fact, I'm noticing that everything is becoming more difficult. I'm losing my pain threshold, I can sense my body, my spirit, remembering the trauma of all these surgeries, especially the one where I almost died. That pain, that subconscious awareness surged through me today as they inched the MRI needle closer to my vein. It was in the powerful magnet of the MRI that forced every cell in my brain to shift in different degrees, to manipulate my fat cells, and water cells, the tissue forming into just the right image to see what is going on in my head. It took everything in my being to hold back a seizure. To hold back tears of how brutal my body has been and continues to be treated. 

If she [my body] was a person on her own, my poor little Body, I would want to take her by the hand, and pull her close. I would rock her, in empathy, and hum her a beautiful melody. It wouldn't change the damage, but I would do everything in my power to console her. 

She's done so much for me, and I keep abusing her. 

It's not what I want, but my choices are limited.