Real Housewives and Brain Surgery

I found out yesterday that one of my middle school friends, LeeAnne Locken, is one of the housewives on the new Real Housewives of Dallas! WOW. Good for her! We love the Real Housewives franchise. I can't wait to see what happens. Series premiere is Monday night!

I'll refrain from posting our 7th grade a capella choir photo, LeeAnne. You're welcome. ;)

We met Lauren's neurosurgeon yesterday. He was GREAT. He's the right age- not too young, not too old, within the 40-55 year old range. (I'm not firm on that requirement, it's more a "guideline." A very... narrow one, but a part of my evaluation, since most of it is actually about things like trust, which we have to determine in what will probably be less than two hours with the person prior to surgery.) The surgeons and oncologists meet periodically to discuss all their upcoming cases, and Lauren's will be on this Friday's agenda. We'll hear back Friday or Monday on what the plan will be.

Meanwhile, we have also sent her records to UT Southwestern for a second opinion. None of us has ever done the second opinion thing, but if brain surgery isn't the occasion, what is? The doc at UTSW is younger than my arbitrary age requirement (gasp), but she specializes in deep brain gliomas, so there's that. The doc here doesn't feel there are any procedures/equipment available in Dallas that aren't available in Austin at this point. He is confident that he can get at least most of the tumor out. We'll see what UTSW says.

My experience so far is that the docs usually have very different opinions, so Lauren will have to go with her gut and choose the one that is best for her. Hopefully she can stay in Austin, but if there is something better available somewhere else, we'll go wherever she needs to go.

Today, I'm taking Laura to her surgeon to get her SAVI port to begin her 5-day breast cancer radiation treatment. Five! Days! How cool is that? Very localized, too. Her radiation oncologist is 38. She likes him, but she does call him Doogie.