Bulldozer00's Blog

In the interest of ongoing full disclosure (lol), here’s the report from my latest brain MRI performed on 1/12/21:

I’m waaaaaay past the point of being intimidated by all the med-speak, but “craniocaudad” did catch my eye as a funny new word. I pronounced it as “cranio-crawdad” as I read it and laughed out loud as memories of eating real crawdads and drinking hurricanes at Mardi Gras flooded my tumor-tinted brain. I laughed again as I googled it and learned that it was spelled wrong. Its correct spelling is “craniocaudal” and it describes a dimension in a 3D coordinate system whose origin is anchored to the skull somewhere.

The MRI follow up with my neurosurgeon took place an hour after the scan. It occurred in my car outside the doctor’s office, which is in the building right next door to the MRI place. Don’t be silly, the doctor didn’t walk out to the car and give me the news from the passenger seat. He wanted me to be easily accessible in case the MRI showed something ominous and he needed to physically examine me.

We held an iPhone telemedicine session and as soon as his face came online he said my favorite meditation mantra: “it looks exactly like the last scan“. And with that, we were done after 5 more minutes of exchanging pleasantries.

Whew! I’ve been gifted yet another three month reprieve from being consumed by scary thoughts of being cyberknifed again or having my skull drilled open to excise some emperor turds. Onward to next month’s chest/abdomen/pelvis CT scan.