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Gaa Gaa Eyes
Keenan's story

It started with a visit to the surgeon after my MRI. He explained the middle fossa and the translab approaches in detail, including the part about "putting a shim under your brain so we keep it out of the way to finish drilling your bone."

He said I would be a week in the hospital bandaged like a mummy and then six weeks at home, feeling like hell. I said "Well, at least I'll get some reading done in the hospital."

He said "You wont be doing any reading."

I said "Why not?"

He said, "Keenan, we're moving your brain! Your eyes are going to be going like this." At that, he raised his two index fingers and twirled them.

This stunned me. Then, not really knowing what I was asking, I asked "What about radiation?"

He said "Too close to the brain." And that was IT. Dismissed in a fragment of a sentence.

I went home stunned at the prospects of my immediate future. One week of gaa gaa eyes (Q Q) and six weeks of hell.

I turned on the computer, brought up AltaVista, typed "acoustic neuroma" and found 500,000 documents on this wonderful topic. I started reading. Story after story of post-surgical misery. I was stunned again. I felt depressed (rare for me).

[But I learned a lot.]

Aside from meeting interesting people with strong opinions and good hearts, I have learned that, in matters of serious medicine, we have GOT to be discerning consumers, doing comparison shopping, demanding scorecards of our providers - their win-loss records - and referrals from patients with successful and not so successful outcomes.

I think any surgery-inclined person should also examine the case for the various forms of radiation. What's the win-loss record here; what's the side-effects experience here? What are the long term potentials? (I did that and am not sorry.)

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Last Edited: Wednesday, October 30, 2002