So the wife just got the disk of her latest MRI, and has the images taken before the surgery. The format the hospital sends them in is VERY easy to navigate and view, but not terribly easy to convert to a more universal file format, so there is some degradation in the image quality. Also this IS brain surgery and I am not a brain surgeon so the images aren’t EXACTLY the same, and some of my observations are educated speculation.
There’s my lovely wife’s brain. This is looking upward at about the middle of her head, the two circles at the top are her eyes, and if you squint at either side you can see her earlobes.
So because we’re looking up the left side is her right and you’ll see a bright patch on the left (her right), that’s part of the fluid-filled tumor that was likely the cause of her problems. Now the dramatic after.
Pretty impressive huh? The white color is just brain fluid. I guess the little “Tail” at the bottom of the lobectomy is where the tumor was also removed. We’ll watch to confirm its all fluid and scar tissue and not regenerating tumor cells, but she’s doing awesome now. No seizures, and the only mental differences to her post-op is now her memory seems a lot better.
The brain is REALLY amazing, isn’t it?
That is amazing, Weerd. I’m happy for you both!
Familiar pictures. I wish I could have kept a set of mine to frame nicely and hang on the wall.
But then I’m a bit strange.
Did you have something done? The wife just read your comment and is now contemplating making it her computer desktop.
**Update** Its now her desktop.
I’m lucky in that I get to say that when they looked in my head, they really didn’t find much.
😛
Glad to hear it. Trust me, getting from point A to point B was no picnic!
I’ll keep making light of something that shouldn’t be made light of and say “I dodged that bullet”.
They were looking in my head because of some serious recurring pain I was having. No cause was ever found. From the time I was scanned until the Doc told me the results (which he did with poor bedside manners – thanks, jerk) I was a mess.
During that time I was Shrodinger’s Cat – I had a tumor and didn’t have a tumor.
The result was no tumor.
I can say “I know just what it is like” only because I know that I can’t. Not even close.
God bless you and your Mrs.
What I also find amazing is that we can look inside your wife’s head, find stuff that shouldn’t be there, then go in with drugs, radiation, or scalpels and excise it out. And not only does your wife live, there are hopefully no long term adverse affects.
No long term adverse affects for taking a chunk out of someone’s brain!
Science and technology are great! (Not to be morbid but 100 years ago, your wife wouldn’t stand a chance going another 5 years, today you and her will enjoy decades more together.)
ViolentIndifference, I hear you on that. The Mrs. was the exact opposite. She had her first seizure as a teenager, and had at least one MRI every year since then. The “Before” scan above is pretty much how her thought-box looked for almost 15 years.
Nobody even suspected it to be a tumor. Even when the Doctor had it in his hand and was looking at it, it didn’t appear to be a tumor. I still call it a lesion because that’s what I always knew it as.
But after the lab got done with it it turned out to be a tumor. So she didn’t know she had a brain tumor until it was too late…for the tumor at least.
But it does mean we’ll have to watch it for pretty much ever to make sure the cells don’t do anything they shouldn’t.
What I also find amazing is that we can look inside your wife’s head, find stuff that shouldn’t be there, then go in with drugs, radiation, or scalpels and excise it out.
That is indeed amazing. Awesome shots Weer’d. Glad to hear she’s doing so well.