Brain Surgery = New Hair Cut!

So alot has happened since the last time I posted. 2 weeks ago I went to the doc to get help with my anxiety and told him about the headaches I've been having for over a year. So he sent me to an eye doc to have my eyes dilated to see if my optical nerve was swollen. It was. At that time they thought it might be Pseudotumor Cerebri causing the swelling which means retention of spinal fluid. They thought that maybe it was collecting around my optical nerves and that was what was causing the headaches and spotty vision. So... they ordered an MRI. MRI's aren't bad, I was nervous at first but they make you really comfortable by putting a towel over your eyes and blanket on you and let you listen to music on head phones. It was loud and a little hard to hold still for so long but I just imagined myself as a figure drawing model and it worked out ok. Plus I got to listen to the Beatles and that always makes everything ok.

I had the MRI on a Saturday and then the following Monday my Doc, Robert Dexter called and wanted to go over the results of the MRI with me. I show up to the appointment and he sits me down and proceeds to tell me that I have a brain tumor. I asked him if he was kidding... he wasn't. I cried. He moved closer to me and gave me a tissue and explained where it was and that is was huge (4.5 cm 'bout the size of a golf ball). He had already set me up for an appointment with the Neurosurgen and he said that I may have to have surgery within the next few days. He called my mom and explained what was going on and then I talked to her for a while and she made plans to fly up the next day to be with me in case they did need to operate. I was pretty freaked out. I was ok with having Pseudotumor Cerebri cuz all they would have had to do was give me a spinal tap to drain the fluids and I just kept thinking that at least it wasn't anything to do with my head. :p

So my mom got to spend a couple of days in Portland with me and it was a lot of fun. We went to the neurosurgeon appointment and he estimated that I've had the tumor for at least 5 years. It was no emergency and yes I could go back to Utah for the surgery. We got to see the MRI and it was weird to think that, that was my head we were looking at and that there was a foreign mass squishing my brain. It is all still very surreal.

So for now I am just planning how to have my hair after the surgery...

I like the last one the best but my hair will have to grow out a little bit before it will look like that. It will probably be most like the second pic at first but longer in the mowhawk part. I figure, hey why not. Good excuse to be edgy, right?