I very much enjoyed reading this. Thank you.
Having received the news of a similar benign brain tumor 24 years ago (and subsequently cut out of me in 8+ hours of surgery) and having two years ago had it’s - found by pure chance while checking something else - successor burned to a crisp with a Gamma Knife (EDIT: “Cyber Blade” was wrong), I found the text rather too preachy for my taste.
The whole “What we can learn from my turmor” really rubbed me the wrong way. What “we” can learn? “We” can learn that everyone has to deal with it on his/her own. Other people will be shocked, helpful, useless, supportive or any variation and combination thereof. Other people might actually be more shaken than you yourself are. Your parents and partners for example. People will cry a lot. It get’s better. Life goes on. Sure, it might change some of your priorities and general outlook on life, but it also may not. It’s a very specific and very individual thing to go through.
I… I want to learn more about the CyberBlade.
“I had really hoped to avoid brain surgery in my life.”
Great line.
I shouldn’t post late at night after reading Science Fiction 
- got the name wrong.
The name is actually “Gamma Knife”, from a swedish company (http://bit.ly/1IdSd8u). The process is called “Stereotactic Radiosurgery” where roughly 200 Cobalt-60 rays are concentrated on a point within your skullframe.
Added: “A Gamma Knife typically contains 201 cobalt-60 sources of approximately 30 curies (1.1 TBq), each placed in a circular array in a heavily shielded assembly. The device aims gamma radiation through a target point in the patient’s brain. The patient wears a specialized helmet that is surgically fixed to the skull, so that the brain tumor remains stationary at the target point of the gamma rays. An ablative dose of radiation is thereby sent through the tumor in one treatment session, while surrounding brain tissues are relatively spared.”
I chose not to Google much. I wouldn't learn more until meeting with a neurosurgeon the following Tuesday morning.
Best advice ever. Of several ailments that I’ve had, it always turns out that googling only makes things worse for the serious ones, and google university is a shitty, unaccredited institution.
Point being: Knowledge isn’t bad, it’s just that the internet is very unreliable, and you’re better off getting your information from people who went to 8+ years of medical school plus continuing education, than you are getting your info from some crank yammering about how “toxins” are “sapping” our “precious bodily fluids”,
It can be very difficult to figure out what’s real and what’s bullshit on the web. Even if you restrict yourself to peer reviewed articles, there’s a lot that’s accepted due to institutional laziness, and the need for a journal to pad it’s length, or even a bunch of vanity journals publishing anyone who pays a fee… Ugh, disgusting.
I will never complain about the 4 tattoos I had to get for radiation again!
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