The Unexpected Journey – Part 2: The Hidden Challenge

Yes, this is another long one, so strap in!

As mentioned in part 1, we were planning our short 3-day weekend trip to Boise to do a couple of things. First, the last treatment of Cereset Laura had scheduled for Monday, November 18th. We took the opportunity to leave on Saturday, though, so that we could arrive early enough to attend church services at the Boise location of Awaken Church. The plan was to leave early on Saturday, drive a leisurely 8 hours to Boise, and arrive in time for an early dinner.

Things did not go quite as planned.

Since Laura was still in considerable pain, we were not able to get moving until well after noon. That meant we would be arriving late. The ride there for Laura was also very excruciating. She was unable to relax and sleep in the car because the pain made it so uncomfortable for her. But, after a long and painful drive, we arrived and found a downtown restaurant that was open late.

The next morning, we attended church and spoke to several local people and got lots of prayer. It was very good to have a part of our church family in another city to help support us.

On Monday morning, Laura was in even more pain than before – in fact, it seemed to be the worst so far. She was unable to really focus, but even so, we were able to pack up and check out of our hotel and go to the Cereset clinic. Once there, Laura was in so much pain that she had trouble getting out of the car. We finally went inside and met with the clinician. After talking to Laura for a little bit, she felt that she was unable to continue and do the actual treatment. In fact, she recommended that we find the nearest MRI place as soon as we could.

She happened to have a friend who worked at an imaging center, so she called her, and they found a local MRI place that had availability for us to walk-in right away. So, we got in the car and drove there as fast as we could – all while watching out for large bumps or potholes – bumps made her head hurt even worse.

Once we got there, we were fortunate enough to be the only ones there, so they did a quick intake interview and brought Laura back for the scan. While she was in there, I dealt with getting the MRI paid for. They could either do insurance or out-of-pocket payment. Insurance would have required pre-authorization, and we didn’t have time to wait for that. We chose the out-of-pocket option, and it was not very expensive at all – it only cost $550 for an MRI. I was expecting several thousand but was pleasantly surprised at a much lower cost. I had a good chunk of that in my HSA account, so I used that and paid the rest on the credit card.

Then, after waiting for the scan, everything changed.

One of the nurses came out to talk to me. He had gone to the back with a happy expression when I first met him after his lunch break, but when he came out to talk to me, his face was anything but happy. His concern and sad expression chilled me, but what he said scared me even more. He told me there was a growth or as they said a “mass” in her brain and that they were calling an ambulance to take her away to the emergency room ASAP.

I was in shock.

Laura was in shock too or would have been if the pain wasn’t distracting her. They wheeled her out on a gurney and straight into an ambulance. Neither Laura nor I had ever been in an ambulance. I still haven’t – they wouldn’t let me ride with her, so I had to follow in our car to the emergency room.

They took her in the side entrance, while I had to go in the front door, and I had to wait.

Once they let me in to see her, they made us wait some more while they performed several tests and exams. They took her in for a CT scan to go along with the MRI they did earlier. Once that was done, a neurosurgeon came in to talk to us. He had a very kind demeanor and a quiet confidence about him. I have heard rumors of the arrogance of surgeons, neurosurgeons especially, but this man did not have that – he in fact just seemed like a normal person who was genuinely concerned for us. His compassion for us and gentle demeanor helped to guide us to make the best decision we could regarding Laura’s treatment.

He explained that there was a “mass” in her brain and even showed us the images. He showed us what the MRI displayed as a “mass” on the right-hand side of Laura’s brain, and it was shifting her midline about 16mm to the left. It was so big that it was pushing on her brain and eye, and the pressure alone was causing her headaches. The estimate of its length was about 7 or 8cm long. That’s about 2.7 – 3.1 inches.

Above is the picture of the of the “mass”. I’m not calling it a tumor yet since we didn’t know definitively what it was at this point. The “mass” is the white colored area, and you can see the midline shifted over to the left. We will show the “after” images in a later post. There should be more “texture” than the picture above is showing, but much of it is compressed by the tumor so it doesn’t show up as a normal looking brain.

As he showed us these images, you can imagine that we were scared. The neurosurgeon advised us to get this taken care of as soon as possible. We agreed. They had an opening in the surgery schedule the very next day.

Playing into this decision was the fact that the “bomb cyclone” had just blown through the Pacific Northwest piling up the passes with unseasonable amounts of snow. That would mean that if we were to drive home with her in this condition, in such unbearable pain, we ran a huge risk of getting stranded somewhere without heat or food and nowhere near any decent emergency care. Plus, that would also mean that the driving time could double as drivers (me included) would be driving slowly and carefully. It also had blown out power across Seattle – even our house in Sammamish was without power at this point. In fact, it didn’t come back on until Friday. It was a good thing we were in Boise for all of this.

They admitted her to the hospital, which meant checking her into a room overnight while we waited for surgery.

That sounded quick the way I wrote it, but getting admitted to the hospital takes a good amount of time. I think we were in the emergency room for 5 or 6 hours before they finally wheeled her up to the room.

Since we had checked out of the hotel, all of our stuff was in the car, and I had no place to sleep. Fortunately, they were able to wheel a cot into the room to allow me to sleep next to Laura. This was very gracious of them, and the only way we would be okay with staying. I certainly wasn’t going to leave her side. Once we got her to the room, I was able to bring a few things up from the car for our comfort – including Laura’s pillow, which we had brought for the weekend.

In the morning, we discovered that our little room had an excellent view of the mountains around Boise.

The room was small, but the nurses were great at keeping an eye on her throughout the night and the next morning. Maybe they were too good, since neither of us got much sleep as they kept waking her up to take vitals.

They started giving her some things to control the swelling in her head, and once it started to take effect, she came alive and alert again: almost back to herself.

While we waited to be called into surgery, some of the pastors of the local church came to visit us and brought me food – I was starving! Laura wasn’t allowed to eat since she was scheduled for surgery that day. They also spent time with us and prayed for us.

The surgery was supposed to be at 4pm, but as that hour arrived and passed, the surgeon came by to tell us that because the last surgery went over time, they would be doing the surgery the next day – on his day off even.

That meant another night on the squeaky cot in the hospital room for me. Another night of Laura getting poked and prodded and woken up every 3 hours, but at this point I had taken the rest of the week off work and had nowhere else to be except there by her side.

So, we waited.

To be continued…