After the Gamma Knife

My dad started chemo again. He started December 1, 2008 After the Gamma Knife. He did extremely well with the treatments like he had every time before, and unlike pretty much every other person we had known that had to do chemo. My dad constantly seemed tired, and slept a lot. We had a good Christmas, which was very important to us.

                On February 17, 2009 we met Dr. Mark Henderson, the neurosurgeon at IUPUI teaching hospital in Indianapolis who performed my dad’s Gamma Knife. Dr. Henderson was very pleased that the tumor had shrunk a bit.

                On April 21, 2009 my dad had a CT scan on his lungs; this resulted in the doctors saying that his lungs looked stable after the lung cancer. My dad had an MRI the same week as the CT scan, but the MRI was on his brain. On April 22, 2009 we received a phone call from Dr. Huh, my dad’s oncologist. Dr. Huh told us that the MRI was either showing scar tissue or another brain tumor, we were all praying for scar tissue. All of us just wanted my dad to have a good summer. On May 11, 2009 my dad had a PET scan and the scan showed activity in my dad’s right temporal lobe which is very serious. To this point it did not look like our prayers had been answered, we were all very scared. After the scan the doctors in Indianapolis began to drag their feet it was ridiculous. It seemed to us that the doctors had given up on my dad, and the thought of that scared us more than anything. During this time none of us could sleep, we were so scared, it always seemed like one of us was crying. It was a wait and see game, It was horrible!

 It had been almost a month by the time we finally saw a neurologist, Dr. Dropcho. We had to be in Indianapolis by 9 am Indiana time which 8 am Illinois so that meant we had to leave our house around 6 that morning, this was the earliest we had left the house for a doctor’s appointment in a long time. Dr. Dropcho seemed to believe that this tumor was in the same spot as the tumor that the Gamma Knife had been used on was. He believed this was another metastasized tumor, not the Glioblastoma coming back which was good news, I know that sounds weird, but it was really good news. Dr. Dropcho told us that my dad needed another MRI, a possible biopsy, and maybe another brain surgery. We had to come back after a week, and in that week they had preformed another MRI. The next time we visited Dr. Dropcho they had already began talking about when to schedule my dad’s surgery, and where they would perform the surgery. Even though Dr. Schapiro was a great surgeon, we did not want to go back to Wishard so we decided on IUPUI and my dad’s surgery was scheduled for June.