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Philippians 4:13 - I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.A new path of life started two months ago when I started having a whole bunch of symptoms I never experienced before. The culmination of tests, appointments, and specialists came to the conclusion two weeks ago that I have a brain tumor in the central area of my brain called the corpus collusem.
My choice was to be treated at Penn University's Neuroscience Department and I really wanted to have Dr. Donald O'Rourke to be my treating neurosurgeon. Brain Tumors is all he does and he is on national brain tumor fellowship and is the chair of the national brain tissue bank research group.
I called them last week, they had an appointment opening with Dr O'Rourke this past Tuesday and I am now scheduled for a craniometry (open skull brain surgery) this coming Thursday (4/26) to remove it. It was a true miracle to be seen by him, let alone in a week with a surgery opening the following week. The push for immediate surgery is that it is not near my reading, communicating, learning hub now so get it out before it grows into that spot. The only major post-op risk is losing feeling and control of my right leg for a couple months until the swelling from surgery subsides. If the pathology comes back as cancer and not benign, I will start other treatments in six to eight weeks.
To say the least, Alisa and I were shocked, but our faith is strong and I know no matter what, it's going to be okay. There have been so many things people would call coincidences, but the string of them, the timing, the complexity of how things worked out, points to a God bigger than these circumstances that I trust has it in His hands for today, on Thursday while the team is removing the tumor deep in my head and in the future.
