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| Pre-surgery haircut - I only needed a small patch shaved |
After talking with the doctor, we decided to return to the U.S., specifically to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF), for further evaluation and treatment.
The next few days were a bit of a blur. Colleagues at the Embassy could not have been more helpful and supportive and by some minor miracle, thirty-six hours later, we were boarding our San Francisco bound flight in Sydney having spent about an hour packing our bags.
We were very fortunate to get in to see two outstanding cancer specialists at UCSF the day after landing in California. We had many questions but definitive answers were hard to come by. The bottom line is, all the doctors seemed to agree on was that my MRIs appeared to show a brain tumor - with one localized mass deep in the center base of my brain near the corpus callosum and extensive, diffuse tumor all over the left hemisphere. Unfortunately, because of the location and extent of my tumor, we knew immediately that surgical removal wouldn't be an option. I was scheduled for brain surgery (biopsy) a week later just to take tissue samples from the tumor site which would allow the doctors to type the cells and make a definitive diagnosis.
The surgery went well and I was up walking about twelve hours after the procedure. We were out of the hospital two days later trying to be patient during the long wait for the test results.
A week later, I was diagnosed with a grade II diffuse astrocytoma. On the negative side, astrocytoma is a malignant type of glioma or primary brain cancer. Gliomas represent only about ten percent of brain cancer cases, the vast majority being secondary cancers that have metastasized and spread to the brain from another part of the body. On the positive side, astrocytoma is typically a slower growing and less aggressive form of brain cancer.
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