Brain Tumor Surgery Quotes

A scan showed that a benign brain tumor was pressing on her right frontal lobe. In terms of operative risk, it was the best kind of tumor to have, and the best place to have it; surgery would almost certainly eliminate her seizures. The alternative was a lifetime on toxic antiseizure medications.

Another Damasio patient, “Elliot,” was a successful husband, father, and businessman until undergoing brain surgery on a tumor. The surgery damaged his frontal lobe and thereby affected his ability to carry through on plans. He would embark on a project only to lose sight of his goal in doing so. For example, asked to sort documents, he would go overboard: “He was likely, all of a sudden, to turn from the sorting task he had initiated to reading one of those papers carefully and intelligently, and to spend an entire day doing so. Or he might spend a whole afternoon deliberating on which principle of categorization should be applied.

One day, Matthew, the little boy with the brain tumor who had charmed the ward a few years back, was readmitted. His hypothalamus had, in fact, been slightly damaged during the operation to remove his tumor; the adorable eight-year-old was now a twelve-year-old monster. He never stopped eating; he threw violent fits. His mother’s arms were scarred with purple scratches. Eventually Matthew was institutionalized: he had become a demon, summoned by one millimeter of damage. For every surgery, a family and a surgeon decide together that the benefits outweigh the risks, but this was still heartbreaking. No one wanted to think about what Matthew would be like as a three-hundred-pound twenty-year-old.

operative risk, it was the best kind of tumor to have, and the best place to have it; surgery would almost certainly eliminate her seizures. The alternative was a lifetime on toxic antiseizure medications. But I could see that the idea of brain surgery terrified her, more than most. She was lonesome and in a strange place, having been swept out of the familiar hubbub of a shopping mall and into the alien beeps and alarms and antiseptic smells of an ICU. She would likely refuse surgery if I launched into a detached spiel detailing all the risks and possible complications. I could do so, document her refusal in the chart, consider my duty discharged, and move on to the next task. Instead, with her permission, I gathered her family with her, and together we calmly talked through the options. As we talked, I could see the enormousness of the choice she faced dwindle into a difficult but understandable decision. I had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved. She chose surgery.

As it happened, the child’s mother was a radiologist. The tumor looked malignant—the mother had already studied the scans, and now she sat in a plastic chair, under fluorescent light, devastated. “Now, Claire,” the surgeon began, softly. “Is it as bad as it looks?” the mother interrupted. “Do you think it’s cancer?” “I don’t know. What I do know—and I know you know these things, too—is that your life is about to—it already has changed. This is going to be a long haul, you understand? You have got to be there for each other, but you also have to get your rest when you need it. This kind of illness can either bring you together, or it can tear you apart. Now more than ever, you have to be there for each other. I don’t want either of you staying up all night at the bedside or never leaving the hospital. Okay?” He went on to describe the planned operation, the likely outcomes and possibilities, what decisions needed to be made now, what decisions they should start thinking about but didn’t need to decide on immediately, and what sorts of decisions they should not worry about at all yet. By the end of the conversation, the family was not at ease, but they seemed able to face the future. I had watched the parents’ faces—at first wan, dull, almost otherworldly—sharpen and focus. And as I sat there, I realized that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some point, usually arise in a medical context. In the actual situations where one encounters these questions, it becomes a necessarily philosophical and biological exercise. Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including, alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and death its cessation. While all doctors treat diseases, neurosurgeons work in the crucible of identity: every operation on the brain is, by necessity, a manipulation of the substance of our selves, and every conversation with a patient undergoing brain surgery cannot help but confront this fact. In addition, to the patient and family, the brain surgery is

For all brain tumors, definitive diagnosis can only be made by surgery with pathological examination of tissue. MRI or CT scans or other images may suggest the tumor type, but they are not definitive.

People sometimes ask what it’s like to be a surgeon who works with the living human brain each day. I think sometimes it’s like being Harry Potter—a wizard who has at his command such wonderful technologies as an MRI machine that lets us image the tissue as we remove the tumor, or a global positioning system that lets us navigate through the brain, or an operating microscope that magnifies objects forty times and lets us do very precise surgery. More often, however, it’s like Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, trying to fulfill a quest against an unknown evil, surrounded by friends and working teams and helped by a little magic. You often feel vulnerable and frightened, despite a brave exterior.

Focused ultrasound is a new, revolutionary, groundbreaking, non-invasive therapeutic technology that has the potential to transform the treatment of a variety of serious medical disorders in addition to brain tumors, improve outcomes, and decrease the cost of care. It could become an alternative to, or complement for, traditional surgery, radiation therapy, and drug delivery.

The tumor will eventually take Paul’s life. However, focused ultrasound therapy could transform a fatal condition into one that is chronic, but manageable. In contrast to the best current treatment circa 2015, the futuristic ultrasound therapy depicted here circa 2025 could potentially be accomplished on an outpatient basis without multiple days of hospitalization; without surgery and its attendant risks of infection and complications like blood clots and brain damage; without the harmful effects of radiation; and with minimal side effects of chemotherapy due to focused drug delivery. The net result could be a dramatic improvement in the quality and longevity of countless lives, and decreased cost of treatment.

Michelle shrugged off Sam’s aggression. Her eyes misted with memories. “Our curveball was a brain tumor. A grade IV astrocytoma, to be specific. He tried all the treatments—chemo, radiation, even surgery. Nothing helped alleviate his symptoms or his suffering. He was dying in the most horrible way. Seizures, nausea, blinding headaches, memory loss like an Alzheimer’s patient. I didn’t know what it was like to watch someone I love suffer so much, but I can relate to Julie’s pain because the experience was utterly excruciating.

It was surreal to see such normalcy in the midst of my personal crisis. The horses still raced. The vendors still served food. The world did not stop because I had a brain tumor.

It’s rumored that a year ago, a five-year-old kid went into surgery to have a brain tumor removed. When the surgeon sawed open his skull, the “tumor” jumped out, a ball of whipping tentacles that launched itself at the surgeon and burrowed into his eye socket. Two minutes later, he and two nurses lay dead in the OR, their craniums neatly cleaned from the inside. I say this incident was “rumored” because at this point in the story, men in suits showed up, flashed official-looking ID and took away the bodies. The story in the paper the next day was that everybody died due to an oxygen tank explosion.