He tells us that the C-spine and the T-spine look fine, which is something he was concerned about.
The L-spine still has something called a 'myxopapillary ependymoma'.
I learned a lot about the spine today.
So the spinal cord is surrounded by bone - big fat bone near the front of your body, with smaller pokey ones (lack of better word) toward the back. Inside the bone, is the spinal sac with spinal fluid. Inside that, is the spinal cord. Between the thoracic spine and the cervical spine, the spinal cord begins to branch off. Right around that point, I have a 30mm x 15mm tumor inside the spinal sac pressing the spinal cord against the edge. He says the tumor can't get any bigger around - there's no room for it.
So he recommended surgery. It will have to be open surgery. To get to the spinal sac, he has to remove portions of the 3 surrounding vertebrae (T12 - L2), open up the sac, take out the tumor, and sew up the sac such that no fluid could leak, and sew me up.
He said he would be able to get it all out in one piece, at which point he will send in the whole thing to pathology (and that I couldn't keep it).
More as it warrants.
Oh, this was on his magazine rack:
Jonathan and I read up on your posts...we like the snarky humor, but gee, what a bummer of a reason to start a blog. We'll keep you in our prayers; do keep us posted! And I totally get the need for Jen to be there. "But what about this? What does that mean?" "......." :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I intended to start it for a while before all the "stuff" started happening. I just didn't. Oh well.
ReplyDelete(I actually had it public for about a day on Dec 3 when I started it, but I figured nobody would care about a blog with 2 posts.)