I think looking at my calendar it took two weeks to get from a general diagnosis to surgery.
On the Friday early afternoon we were at the stroke unit with a suspected stroke. After my Uncle has taken him to the docs they'd sent him straight there. I caught them up. They gave him a CT scan and after he'd come back and hung out the nurse came to the bed and said that the doctor wanted to see us, which was weird because the doctor wasn't there.
We followed her into the nurses staff room and they recapped why we were there, told us why they'd tested, what they'd tested, and when you're thinking that the worst thing they could tell you was that it was a bad stroke, they said it was a 'large growth surrounded by fluid'. I don't think I could really say what I thought or felt at that point but I think that it was numb detachment. It's not that you don't hear it or believe it, it just all turns a bit surreal.
The Stroke unit organised a CT and MRI over the next week and we had an appointment with the consultant a week later. At this point I'm a little annoyed because the chap telling us was obviously a little distressed at what he was saying, although he's a human being too, and left us with a real sense of doom. He said it was a tumour and that whilst it wasn't his field of expertise, it was going to be one of the more nasty ones. Whilst it was still not his area of expertise he saw fit to say that there was a good chance it wouldn't be operable. He was right. It wasn't his area of expertise.
They referred my Dad to Salford and we met with the lovely Ms Karabatsou two days later, who was happy she could operate (see - expert!) and the theatre was already booked pending signatures and acceptance.
The tumour is located in the left temporal lobe and for some reason we have no idea how big it was. I will find out, but now the initial bit is done with, Dad doesn't want to know which is fair enough. She said that she'd managed to remove 80 - 85% which is good if it's a peanut, not as good if its a water melon!
The follow up treatment was prescribed as the six week combined tremadol chemo tablet and radiation treatment, with 6 months of 5 day a month chemo tablet.
