My Friend Sharon

     Sharon would be the first to say each day is to be treasured and lived as fully as possible.  She told me this just last week as she prepared to have a heart ablation procedure.  Sharon reminded me to do everything I wanted to do, " like a bucket list," she said.  "We are a couple of old broads now and it's getting damned hard to deal with all these physical problems."  She was referring more to my upcoming surgery than her procedure which was supposed to be a fairly easy outpatient situation designed to get rid of disturbing rapid heartbeats she had been fighting for several months.  She had been in and out of doctor's offices, tried all the medications suggested but was exhausted from lack of sleep and side effects from the medicines.  She was confident about the outcome of her surgery, but worried about mine.

     Sharon never recovered consciousness once the ablation procedure began.  She had cardiac arrest, massive brain damage and died four days later. I am deeply shocked, saddened and already miss her terribly. I expect her to call me on the phone any minute to discuss our next shopping and lunch-out excursion, another idea for a trip, a movie she enjoyed, a politician she couldn't stand or one of her many social activities.

     Sharon and I moved to Sonoma six years ago and met through our local "Newcomers Club."   We became instant friends, discovering we were born one week apart.  Our lives had been very different until we arrived in Sonoma. She was a San Francisco liberal, animal lover, world traveler, single-all-her-life, career woman and I was a Texas conservative, married-all-my-life, career woman with children, and grandchildren. She needed a "roomy" (the name she called me for the next five years) so I joined her and three of her life-long friends on a four-week European cruise holiday.  Like everything that Sharon did, it was first-class, perfect.  We had such a great time that for the next two years, we followed up with week long spa trips to central California.  

     Sharon was always generous with her time and energy serving on numerous civic boards.  She was brilliant, opinionated, great fun and an excellent cook and hostess.  Her home and garden were "magazine" beautiful, and she shared everything she had liberally with her many friends.  

     Sharon Durbin, you will be missed!

Onward

What a journey life is!  Today I feel so much better about what's going on with the doctors and the decision about the type of surgery.  I heard from Dr. Parsa's office and the two doctors DO agree about the method of surgery!  I really needed to know for sure.  Now I can enjoy the next few weeks.  

Still Undecided..but committed

Drawings of Surgery for Acoustic Neuroma   LINK

                     Just before Christmas I met with the second member of the neurosurgery team, Dr. Steven Cheung at UCSF (otolaryngology- special expertise with acoustic neuromas).  I had seen Dr. Cheung several times before deciding on the Gamma Knife Surgery (radiation), but not since.

            I was nervous,  anxious to hear his opinion about my tumor expecting some simple explanations. But, not so!  His consultation was educational and challenging because he insisted I (me, not them) had to decide what to do after evaluating the various options.

            I could choose not to operate now at all, to wait longer and see if the tumor grows, how much, at at what rate.  However, it has been steadily growing for the past six years in spite of the Gamma Knife Radiation which should have stopped the growth.  Fact: The larger the tumor and the older I get, the more risk the tumor is to my health and the more difficult the surgery.

            After concluding the surgery is the only option I see as viable (and Dr. Parsa had already advised it and sooner rather than later), Dr. Cheung gave me two types of surgery to consider. (This was new information and the reason Dr. Parsa wanted me to meet with Dr. Cheung.)

            The first is retrosigmoid, an advanced technique with the goal of preserving some of my hearing hoping for limited damage to the facial nerves and balance system.  This is the method Dr. Parsa seemed to advise and it sounded good until I met with Dr. Cheung.  He explained this is the more dangerous surgery with the downside  involving the cerebellum, so it is riskier with a myriad of possible side effects. If I was young and had more hearing left in my ear than I do, this would be the route to choose.

            The second is the older method which seemed to be the best for me, translabyrinthine. The huge downside to this technique is that the entire middle ear would be removed leaving me with NO hearing EVER in the effected ear.  

           Entering the site this way gives the best line of sight to the facial nerve allowing a higher chance of  less damage to that nerve. (75% chance I won’t have any additional facial nerve damage).  The facial seizures making me look like Popeye are a nuisance but not the main problem.

           I was told the balance problems I’ve had would go away (80% chance).  The damaged right middle ear would be absent causing the left middle ear to take over.  After some retraining, the brain is supposed to adjust and use only the left middle ear as its balance center.

            The balance and dizzy/spinning episodes are driving me crazy so it would be fabulous to get rid of them.  HOWEVER, after reading reports on the Internet, MANY people continue to have serious balance issues, regardless.  I consider the balance problems to be as horrible, maybe more so, than the hearing loss.

            Dr. Cheung gave many pros and cons of both surgical options not wanting to make the decision for me.  As the meeting concluded  I felt clear that for a person with a tumor the size of mine and for a person of my age, the translabyrinthine method was wiser.

            Here it is January 9, 2011 and I have told the doctors I’ll choose the surgery that will do away with my right-ear hearing which I hate to do. (my family says "You can't hear out of it anyway; even with your hearing aid."  But, I say, "I treasure what hearing I do have, especially when listening to music.")