Good News on Jess

The Doctor's visit this morning went well, and most of the news is good. I'm going to post it the way I heard it here, but will probably have to make corrections (using Jess' input) on the weekend. Here goes...

Dr. Rose was really a nice guy. He asked Jess all kinds of questions before sharing his thoughts, something I think is good. Lots of doctors are not as good as listening as they need to be in my opinion. He allowed us to look over his shoulder at the scans while he discussed them. The aneurysm is clear and obvious if you know what to look for. It is located on the right front side of his brain. (On the scan it looked like it was right behind his eyeball. That was quite cool to look at! :-) Anyway, here are the bullet points from what I understood of the conversation.

• Dr. Rose liked the fact that the aneurysm was discovered inadvertently. This is good news as it means it is not causing any problems yet.
• In his opinion, although surgery might be necessary, it is certainly not the place to start. He wants to "go on a fact-finding mission" first.
• Jess went to get some lab work done as soon as we left the office. He is also scheduled for a small procedure, an angiogram, on Monday. I'll drive him to town and back for this. Again, this is all about taking a better look at the problem.
• When I mentioned the fact that Jess was hoping to go the reunion on the weekend of the 25th, the doctor had no objections. He put the chances of a rupture based on what he was seeing now at less than 1%.Yippee! The reunion trip is back on!

There was only one item that could change the story a bit. Jess had the same scan done (sorry...I'm not "up" on medical jargon; physicians are something I avoid like the plague) that caught this problem a year or so ago. The question is, why didn't this show up then? Jess' homework assignment is to get a copy of that earlier scan for the doc to look at. His guess is that it was there then, but missed, since it was not what they were looking for. There is a possibility, however, that this aneurysm was not there a year ago. If this is the case, then the story is changed drastically and the need to address it more aggressively becomes the focus. We are definitely hoping for the best on this one.

So there it is folks. Jess has something going on inside his brain that needs to be watched, might need to be addressed, but probably will be handled without any surgery or other invasive action.

So far, in other words, the news is all good!