Today Kirsten underwent her third operation in the fight against her pituitary tumor.

Supra-Orbital Craniotomy
Kirsten Uhler, Cogitations, August 23, 2009

Instead of going in through her nose like the previous two times they went straight through her forehead skull. Her neurosurgeon, Dr. Florman, doesn’t shave. Instead, he parts the hair, cuts between the hairs, folds the face down, drills a hole in the skull, removes as much tumor mass as possible, patches the skull hole with a metal plate and screws, and sews the skin back in place. I know. I don’t like it more than you.

Kirsten is a tough girl. She rarely mentioned her surgery and said she wasn’t much nervous.

They called to tell her they were ahead of schedule and were moving her surgery up to 14:30 from 15:30. That cut down our picnic time, but we didn’t mind. We ate in the grass in the shade of a tree just outside the hospital on Portland’s Western Promenade. It was a fantastic morning.

Surgery prep was fairly routine. She got an IV and signed her life away (literally). Dr. Florman came in to review the procedure, and then the anesthesiologists did the same. Then they wheeled her away.

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brain surgery · craniotomy · kirsten · pituitary · surgery · tumor