anaplastic astrocytoma...

diagnosis? grade three, malignant tumor. standard therapy includes surgery and radiation, followed by chemotherapy. there will be regular MRIs and regular check-ups. i am now a cancer patient.

lots of weird things about this. first of all, the chemo could last one and possibly two years. dr. neff says that chemotherapy for brain tumors typically isn't so strong that one loses one's hair and gets really sick. but still... chemo... i keep thinking of myself looking like gollum--green with a really bad combover...

the really awful, heartbreaking risk with this is that because of where the tumor is, i could lose my ability to read. not to see or speak or spell or write or comprehend, but my ability to see letters and translate those letters into the concepts they represent. i wouldn't be able to read! it's not just about books, it's about menus at restaurants and price tags at stores and news headlines and whose number is on the caller ID and subtitles on foreign movies and using the internet and reading a map and absolutely everything about going to law school!

and almost as heartbreaking, a very close second, is that it is dr. neff's very strong recommendation that i postpone law school for a year so that my treatment doesn't interfere. it only makes sense, if i can't read and all. but i told him i wasn't willing yet to commit to that decision. he said he'll support me whatever i decide to do.

stean and i spent over an hour and a half with dr. neff, going over what to expect and how things would work and who i should talk to and what all of this meant. i was glad i had the prior warning so that this didn't come as such a shock. i honestly felt (and still feel) okay about it. cancer. no big thing. this is just one of the many many obstacles that life will give me to overcome. true, this one will be a little more difficult than others, but it's nothing i can't handle.

but... here's the weird part: as stean and i were leaving, headed back to work, my cell phone rang. it was dr. neff, calling to tell me that while we were meeting, the pathologist had called to say that his diagnosis of the anaplastic astrocytoma was not conclusive and he believed my tumor to be of a lower grade.

huh? so now it's grade two, benign brain tumor? and that radiation and chemo stuff is irrelevant?

so, dr. neff was going to take the slides to a different lab to get a second opinion.

good grief.