The day after the MRI, Dr. W called me at work. He launched into an explanation about cranial nerves and how a wart-like thing can grow from them. As he was explaining all of this, I thought to myself, "I need to listen to this carefully. If he's telling me all this stuff, it must be what I have." Dr. W said that during his residency in Canada, he saw a lot of people treated for this condition with radiotherapy, but that here in the U.S., most people have surgery to remove it. He also said that I would need to see a different ENT who specializes in this "thing," and asked me if I would rather go to Georgetown or Johns Hopkins. I told him Georgetown since I live in D.C. He said that he would call the other doctor's office to work on getting me an appointment.
Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with me. He never called it an "acoustic neuroma," and based on his explanation, I thought it would be something easy to remove by going in through the outer ear. Only after I Googled "wart on nerves in ear" did I find out what I was in for. I went outside to call my parents, and my mom answered. She was as startled as I was but told me to not freak out too much until I met with the other doctor.
Dr. W called me back a couple of hours later to tell me that he got me an appointment with the doctor at Georgetown Hospital for two days later. That was slightly alarming because it was so immediate. Was this thing really a lot worse than I understood? I was supposed to stop by his office before I went to Georgetown to pick up the MRI films and a letter from him to my new doctor.
(In the interest of full disclosure, this post was actually written on 1/28/09.)
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