Bring It On

The meeting was Wednesday. Quinn and me and Teague, Dr. Cheshier (neurosurgeon), and our oncologist, Dr. Bruggers. Teague was a hard sell to even show up. Not because he was nervous, though that may have been part of it; he said he wasn’t up for a boring car ride. But since this meeting was all about whether we should have this thing removed, and because the thing in question is in Teague’s head, he had to be part of it.

Teague only had two questions for the surgeon: 1. Have you done this before? and 2. I’m going to be asleep the whole time and won’t feel it, right? With satisfactory answers to both of those, Teague was on board.

Here are the details.

The “thing” is on the top portion of his brain, nowhere near the former tumor site. If you take your right hand and just set it on top of that side of your head, it’s under there. Right middle frontal gyrus.

It’s tiny, like a tic-tac, if tic-tacs were round, and it’s not deep in there; just sitting kind of on top of his brain. I realize now that I don’t actually know how deep. Another question for the surgeon.

Seeing it on the scan was an experience for me. Up until that point, I had thought of it as small and superficial and I could easily lean toward leaving my child the heck alone. We had gone in there knowing, though, that we should have it taken out—we don’t want to later wish we had. Looking at my son’s beautiful, normal brain and then seeing a bright white spot on it solidified that decision. It took me to a “get that out of my kid’s head” place.

Dr. Cheshier said the procedure will be “easy” and that he may be able to get it with a biopsy needle and leave a minimal scar. Just one or two nights in the hospital, no ICU.

Here’s the “but.” There’s a chance he may see fit to do a craniotomy (cutting a little jack-o-lantern plug in Teague’s skull) so he can take a bit of a margin—I didn’t know you could do that in a brain, but evidently you can. Then if pathology comes back with something surprising, like if it is some weird low-grade cancer of some sort, they’ll already have a margin and they’ll know more.

Personally, I’m not expecting this to be cancer. No one is. It’s just some stupid growth. It’s a ball of hair and fingernails or something benign. It didn't enhance with the contrast on the MRI, and cancer usually does. So that's encouraging.

A craniotomy would require an incision of several inches so he could peel back skin and make room to get in there. He would do that along Teague’s hairline so that it would be able to hide better when it heals. It’s definitely a plan B.

Oh, and there’s risk of brain bleed with either procedure because evidently this growth is in a rather vascular area.

Either way, it’s another freaking brain surgery for Teague. I might not be done being upset about that. I go back and forth between being horrified about it and being OK. In my OK moments, I wonder if I’m crazy. This is brain surgery, but because I can compare it to what we did 10 years ago, it seems minor.

In my not-OK moments, it feels at worst like we’re back in that place where our kid could die and at best I realize that they’re going to open his head and dig in his brain. It’s kind of terrifying.

When I allow all the similarities in, like getting calls from the neurosurgery department or talking about hospital stays and cutting my kid’s head open and sutures and scars and recovery, it brings back the old cancer-world feelings, and I get edgy.

But it really is different this time.

The first time, everything was immediate. We found the tumor on a Friday, and Teague was in surgery first thing Saturday morning. This time, they’re just scheduling us like a normal appointment. It'll either be on Wednesday or Friday of next week.

The first time, they opened up the back of Teague’s head, pushed apart the lobes of his cerebellum, removed a cancer that was almost as big as a ping-pong ball, and scraped bits of tumor off of his brain stem. This time, they may be able to get it with a biopsy needle.

The first time, Teague had a 10-day stay in the hospital followed by a couple of months of radiation and all that came with that. This time, we’re looking at one or two nights and then rest up at home.

It’s still pretty scary. I know I’m carrying stress somewhere because my jaw is knotted. And sometimes I feel heavy-hearted and can’t place why until I think about it.

But the kid is OK. He still has that gift he got long before he came into our family—something God gave him when created him that I hope he never loses. I don’t know exactly what it is. There’s a purity and a calmness to it. Maybe it’s trust or faith or bravery or love or all of it.

It showed every day when he was fighting cancer and many more times and in many more situations as he’s grown from a toddler to a preteen. And it showed in his reply to my sister when she messaged to see how he was doing with the decision to go under the knife. He said, “I’m feeling really good about this. Bring it on!!!!”