F*&^*(#%&@^! Double in Size (Paul)

January 7th 2009

Our first MRI since the surgery.

We had a few great weeks. We had a great Thanksgiving, made it out of the ICU, an interesting Christmas, and mellow New Years.

Next on the agenda was the "check in" to see how the remaining Tumor in Marin’s head was doing. Did it grow? Shrink? Stay the same….These questions where never discussed as we entered Dr. Rudnick’s office.

We had been in Los Angeles for the entire day and it never occurred to me that we would expect anything BUT good news.

The MRI was early in the morning. It is sad and comforting in a way, when you know how to navigate a hospital and you can recognize new employees. We whipped through the Hospital, checking off our to-do list.

MRI
PET SCAN
Blood work
And ending with Dr. Rudnick giving us the results of Marni’s MRI.

Our appointment with Rudnick was scheduled for 2PM. Marni wanted to get to the office early; Dr. Rudnick had a super cool fish tank in the corner of the waiting room. It was filled with Jelly fish, so soothing to watch.

When we visited the office with Finn on one of our original meetings; Finn explained to us that the family of Jelly Fish where just like us. There were four of them in the tank.

"Look dad," he said, pointing to each Jelly Fish showing Marni and me which Jelly we were, "there are you and mama and look these smaller ones are I and Sloan." Damn cute.

After a few minutes of soothing our souls. We were escorted in by Rebecca, at this point we knew all the people working there, and as usual they all loved Marni.

2:15pm

2:30pm

3:00pm

All came and went…. at 3:15 we looked at each other with a bit of fear in our eyes.

Very uncertain of why it is taking so long… Dr. Rudnick entered the room a few minutes after 3:15.

In his typical mellow low voice fashion, he asked Marni how she was feeling then got right to the point.

He explained to us that Dr. Yu was coming down to speak with us, but that the MRI showed that since October's surgery. The Tumor that was still left in her head had grown and become very aggressive.

A blow that we were not expecting...

He escorted us into the lab area where he could bring up on a computer monitor the October MRI after her first surgery and the MRI that was done 6 hours earlier that day...

He looked at us with a very sad face and said, "Your tumor has double in size, I am so sorry."

Dr. Yu arrived shortly thereafter and spoke with Dr. Rudnick before seeing us. When they both walked in, they were in shock as much as we were. Both did not expect this to happen.

Marni stood up and gave Dr. Yu a big huge as he walked into the room. I think everyone in the room did their best to hold back tears. As we all know, Marni has a knack of developing close relationships with people, whether they want to or not. I image as a doctor (especially ones with a brain tumor) it would be difficult having strong personal feelings for patients. He was sweet with her, both doctors were...

We began talking options. Both recommended that we needed to be aggressive with the tumor.
Gamma Knife, Radiation, and Chemo.

Marni agreed; she wanted the tumor out!