The Diagnosis

After the long wait in the morning and the nervous anticipation I got to spend 2 1/2 hours in the MRI tube.  Believe it or not it was very relaxing (even with all the noise!).  My wonderful mother-in-law came down that morning and stayed with the kids.  We had to put my little sweet Levi on a bottle and we knew at that point that I would not be able to nurse him for at least 24 hours after the MRI.  He's not a bottle baby at all.  (Now we know that we're totally done nursing and Levi has been completely blessed to be able to adjust with very few complaints up to this point.  Okay, that was a tangent....)

After the MRI we headed to the Dr's office to get the results.  Because the test was so lengthy we had a good wait ahead of us and the Dr said we could wait or come home and he'd call.  We decided to come home to be with the kids.  We were here for about 45 minutes and his nurse called to say that he did want to talk to us in his office.  When we sat down he immediately drew us a picture:

There is no option with this tumor but to operate.  Given the location and the complexity of it being surrounded by several small neck vertebrae and my nervous system they won't go in to biopsy.  They will only go in to remove.  Their best educated guess is that it is a benign tumor.  However we won't know that until after the surgery and the biopsy. 

The doctors here will not touch such a tumor.  I am going to Salt Lake to the University of Utah Hospital.  They a top notch hospital.  Monday morning Brian and I will be down there for a consultation with Dr. Dailey, the surgeon.   At that point they will walk us through everything, including the risks involved, we'll get to see the pictures of the tumor, date of surgery, time expected for a recovery, etc...