A Collective Sigh of Relief.

I am happy to report that Mandy’s second surgery was another successful one. It took eleven hours, but the end result was a resection of nearly all of the tumor. Because Mandy’s facial nerve was so intertwined with the tumor, Dr. Martuza opted to leave a small piece of tumor in order to save the facial nerve. They will watch the tumor for regrowth with MRI follow-ups every six months or so and there is a chance that they might be able to just leave it alone forever (if it doesn’t grow back) or perhaps treat it with radiation at a later time. Either way, this small piece of beningn tumor is something that will not affect Mandy’s day to day life, and given all of the options, we are confident that the doctors made the right choice for Mandy’s long term quality of life. Given the state of her other cranial nerves after the surgery, the doctors are optimistic that Mandy’s balance, swallowing, and eye movement will all get back to normal over a relatively short period of time, but it is too early to be 100% sure of anything at this point. Because the facial nerve was aggrviated by the tumor resection, Mandy will have and does currently have some facial weakness on her right side. It is not savere, and we should learn more over the next few days about what to expect in terms of facial movement long term. My now sophmoric understanding of the ins and outs of acoustic neuroma surgery is that we should be thankful that the doctors were able to save that nerve at all. Given the size and location of Mandy’s tumor, there was a very realistic chance (about 20%) that she would permanently lose movement on the right side of her face and that the surgeon would have to sever the nerve in order to resect the tumor. We have kept those cards close to our hearts over the past several months, so it is a tremendous feeling of relief to know that Mandy has a very good chance of making significant progress and even perhaps a full recovery of facial movement.

Mandy is recovering well and sleeping a lot this morning. She will see the physical therapist and speech therapist today so that they can evaluate when she will be able to leave the ICU, but things seem to be moving along nicely so far. We will do out best to keep everyone up-dated as we know more, but for now, I think we can all unite around what a long journey this has been for Mandy, and we should all be extremelly grateful to everyone here at MGH for their thoughtful, expert, and skillful care.

Onward!

Seek the Joy,

Dave