Hey everybody! I'm about 4 hours out of surgery today and wanted to give an update. Everything went amazingly well. Better than I could have hoped!
I'm so freaking excited! Surgery was scheduled for 5 hours but they got it done in 2.5 and Friedman said it went great. Tumor came out very easily, cochlear implant went in great and super importantly to me they didn't have to do anything in the middle ear so my eustacian tube and middle ear is fully intact. I'll definitely be able to scuba dive again! Thank God and Dr. Friedman!
Here's some other cool stuff:
1. My tinnitus is quieter and the pulsatile aspect is GONE.
2. My imbalance is noticeably better. I have zero dizziness or nausea. They expected 2-3 days in the hospital but discharged me shortly after surgery!
3. My nystagmus and eye craziness is noticeably better!
3 weeks till activation of my CI!
I'M SO VERY VERY GRATEFUL!
A couple other tidbits.
1. Though I did preop consult with Dr. Schwartz, I don't think he was in the surgery because of the very straightforward location for my tumor. Everybody was really careful to say "hey so we aren't minimizing this and it's a really big deal for you, but this is about as easy a case as it gets for us. Not brain surgery - just deep ear surgery."
2. Dr. Friedman is currently training a Fellow named Dr. Peter Dixon. I was really impressed with Dr. Dixon throughout our pre-op consults and conversations before surgery. I asked him "so, why did ypu pick skull base surgery?" And he said "it's hard and very detailed." That's an awesome answer for me. His interests include vestibular schwannomas and cochlear implants. Cool!
3. I can't say enough good things about the whole UCSD team. From the nurses to the anesthesiologist to the occupational therapy folks. VERY glad I had my surgery done here!
I'll update you on the CI activation in a couple weeks.
