In a Nutshell.......

Again we left NJ at 7:00am for a 10:00am appointment at Weill Cornell in NYC. What was suppose to take us one hour ended up taking 2 hours and 45 minutes because of traffic. We ended up there 15 minutes before the appointment and waited almost an hour in the waiting room. Dr Stieg came in and spent about 10 minutes going over the plan again....he will actually start the surgery and try to remove the tumor from the brain stem....he said that sometimes they come off easy and sometime they are pretty sticky. Once he is done with his part then Dr. Selesnick will do his part with removing the tumor from the auditory canal. All in all they are guessing that if everything goes perfect that the surgery will take minimum 6 hours.
Dr. Stieg was very upfront in telling me that I will be pretty miserable for the first few days. Because of the location of Mr. T I am going to wake to severe nausea and vomiting which will most likely continue through the first few days. I will have a catheter placed in my spine just in case the fluid builds up too much they will have quick access. So if everything goes as planned I will spend at least 2 days in Neuro ICU and then 3-5 days on the regular neuro unit. Of course any type of complication and the numbers will increase. They also gave the whole "things that could go wrong" speech again. Lets see meningitis, death, infection, death etc etc.
But they keep trying to convince me that its less than a 1% chance for any of those.
They are also pretty optimistic regarding long term effects. Since the only thing that I am experiencing now is the vision issues they are giving me a 95% chance that I will not end up with Bells Palsy or any other type of facial drooping or paralysis. The only thing that they are NOT guaranteeing is saving any part of my hearing in my right ear. Pretty much can rule that out.
They told me that I will wake up with staples behind my right ear. They also warned that I may have an incision on my abdomen because they may need to use my fatty tissue for a skin graft. I pretty much told the doctor that he could take as much fatty tissue as he wanted to and I would even be willing to donate some to other patients if needed. Hell----harvest the fat from my arse while your at it!!
Whats left: Well this week I need to get some lab work, EKG, and chest x-ray.