On June 17th it will be exactly 6 months since the day they cut open my scalp, sawed into my skull and removed a tumor nearly the size of a baseball; which turned out to be one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer around. I was told everything under the sun could happen to me and the severity of this cancer was almost notorious for immediate regrowth. I prepared myself for a road that I had no idea where would lead, buckled down and changed the entire direction of my life in one day. I guess cancer has a way of doing that.
6 months has almost passed and I went and had another MRI done on Monday. It was the first MRI I had gone two months in between scans and up until the friday before I was overly excited as I was feeling better than I have since before my surgery. And then Friday night I started getting the headaches again. And they seemed to be more severe this time and were almost out of nowhere. I had a very sleepless Friday night going into an ever more symptomatic Saturday. Just a little about me before I go any further, I am very 'mental.' Not in the schizo crazy sense, but I analyze EVERYTHING. I have been this way since I can remember and having cancer only made it worse. I am also quite intelligent at times and am very good at finding and recognizing things most people would probably never think twice about. So once I started getting the headaches again, the only baseline I had for anything like that was my tumor. So this lead me to believe there was something going on up there that might not be so great. Needless to say, I was a nervous wreck the next 2 days and during my MRI.
The MRI itself was the longest 30 minutes of my life. I had to try and lay still while fighting of nausea, heavy breathing and the want to get out of the most claustrophobia inducing machine on earth. Once the technician let me out I took the biggest sigh of relief and went to greet Natashia. I told her I did not even care what the MRI said, I was just glad it is over.
So off we go to see Emily, my oncologist to see how my progress is going. We arrive at her office, wait about 15 minutes and the nurse brings us back to her office. I enter her office and she sees me first. She was on speaker phone with another doctor and the second she saw me she picked up her phone and asked the doctor on the other end if he was in his office and if she could go visit with him for a second to go over 'something.' After another second she hangs up the phone says "I'll be right back." And she is off.
Emily's office is not very big and I could easily see her two computer monitors of which one was my current MRI and the other was my chart. Well, panic isn't even close to the right word, but it is the first that comes to mind. After the longest 10 minutes of my life she comes back in and sits down casually and says, "Lets see how the rest of the MRI looks." I said wait, what was that? "Oh that wasn't about you, that was another patient and I can't talk about other patients in front of you."
After a near panic attack, anxiety attack and every emotion under the sun she tells me that! I pretty much prepared myself for bad news and an inevitable second surgery, more radiation, who knows!
Well after recovering from that we went over it in depth and my MRI came back absolutely perfect!!! No new regrowth, no residual swelling and I am actually healing quicker than expected!! All good news and no bad news, those are the days I love.
Thank you all again for following my progress and supporting me. It means the world to me and I love hearing stories of people telling me I inspire or give them a little perspective on life, because lets face it, we don't have it all that bad, do we?
"Make your time here meaningful, leave a mark on the world people won't forget for anytime soon. Even if it is only your family, make sure people know you were a force for positivity and an example to follow. Who knows who you might influence."
FTGF,
Ryan Coffelt
xo
6 months has almost passed and I went and had another MRI done on Monday. It was the first MRI I had gone two months in between scans and up until the friday before I was overly excited as I was feeling better than I have since before my surgery. And then Friday night I started getting the headaches again. And they seemed to be more severe this time and were almost out of nowhere. I had a very sleepless Friday night going into an ever more symptomatic Saturday. Just a little about me before I go any further, I am very 'mental.' Not in the schizo crazy sense, but I analyze EVERYTHING. I have been this way since I can remember and having cancer only made it worse. I am also quite intelligent at times and am very good at finding and recognizing things most people would probably never think twice about. So once I started getting the headaches again, the only baseline I had for anything like that was my tumor. So this lead me to believe there was something going on up there that might not be so great. Needless to say, I was a nervous wreck the next 2 days and during my MRI.
The MRI itself was the longest 30 minutes of my life. I had to try and lay still while fighting of nausea, heavy breathing and the want to get out of the most claustrophobia inducing machine on earth. Once the technician let me out I took the biggest sigh of relief and went to greet Natashia. I told her I did not even care what the MRI said, I was just glad it is over.
So off we go to see Emily, my oncologist to see how my progress is going. We arrive at her office, wait about 15 minutes and the nurse brings us back to her office. I enter her office and she sees me first. She was on speaker phone with another doctor and the second she saw me she picked up her phone and asked the doctor on the other end if he was in his office and if she could go visit with him for a second to go over 'something.' After another second she hangs up the phone says "I'll be right back." And she is off.
Emily's office is not very big and I could easily see her two computer monitors of which one was my current MRI and the other was my chart. Well, panic isn't even close to the right word, but it is the first that comes to mind. After the longest 10 minutes of my life she comes back in and sits down casually and says, "Lets see how the rest of the MRI looks." I said wait, what was that? "Oh that wasn't about you, that was another patient and I can't talk about other patients in front of you."
After a near panic attack, anxiety attack and every emotion under the sun she tells me that! I pretty much prepared myself for bad news and an inevitable second surgery, more radiation, who knows!
Well after recovering from that we went over it in depth and my MRI came back absolutely perfect!!! No new regrowth, no residual swelling and I am actually healing quicker than expected!! All good news and no bad news, those are the days I love.
Thank you all again for following my progress and supporting me. It means the world to me and I love hearing stories of people telling me I inspire or give them a little perspective on life, because lets face it, we don't have it all that bad, do we?
"Make your time here meaningful, leave a mark on the world people won't forget for anytime soon. Even if it is only your family, make sure people know you were a force for positivity and an example to follow. Who knows who you might influence."
FTGF,
Ryan Coffelt
xo
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| Finding ways to entertain yourself while waiting for doctors is always a chore. Enjoy! |
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