My NYU Gama Knife Experience
First of all let me say on the whole every thing turned out great. Every single person that I had contact with from the guard at the front door to the cafeteria lady to the nurses and Dr. Golfinos were wonderful.
So here is the time line everyone wanted.
5:15am I arrive (45 minutes early - I am a anal guy what can I say)
I was given a handful of forms to fill out and then proceeded to the GK center. At the GK center I was given a few other forms to fill out and after they were completed I was taken into the inner sanctum of the GK center.
6:15am - I was given a Fentanyl lollipop and some IV Ativan.
(note that after the fentanyl and ativan, time sort of took a back seat to reality and since I didn't have a watch on the rest of the times are mostly estimates.
6:30am - Head frame placed by Dr. Golfinos. Expecting the worst I found that it actually wasn’t that bad. Besides the drugs mentioned above, they gave me lidocaine to numb up the skin before they put the screw through it. Actually the lidocaine burns a lot but this very quickly goes away because that’s what the drug does. So I just bit the bullet and the burning sensation was over in a few seconds. The placement of the head frame and the placement of the 4 screws into my skull was not bad at all. This is where I thought I was going to see stars, but in real life going to the dentist and having your teeth cleaned is probably more painful.
7:15am - Into the MRI with frame attached. Zero problems here, actually I felt more comfortable than I normally do in an MRI machine. Because they attach the head frame to the MRI I couldn't move at all, better yet I didn't have to worry about moving and as we all know less movement equals a better MRI.
8:00'ish - Taken back to the inner sanctum and I had to wait for the computer modeling to take place. I was comfortable and kind of enjoyed the rest I was getting.
10:00'ish - I was taken into the GK room and received a briefing of what would happen next. After a few minutes I was bolted to the machine, they all left the room and the table slid me into the machine and I received my 25 minutes of gamma radiation. (I was actually taken out of the machine one and a few things were adjusted so I actualy had one treatment of 15 minutes and one treatment for 10 minutes)
10:30'ish - Out of the GK room and my doctor removed the head frame and showed me some images of my gamma exposure and explained to me how everything went well.
11:00'ish - Found my family, went up to the cafeteria, had a cup of coffee and a corn muffin.
1:00pm - arrived back home and just sat around and watched TV. Went to bed at like 9pm and woke up around 7am.
1/9/09 - Had a bit of a headache this morning that was relieved with tylenol.
1/10/09 - Headache minimal but was nauseous most of the day.
1/11/09 - Fell good - no headache no nausea
Tomorrow I will go back to work and see how that goes.
If I could reverse time and rethink everything I would have done the same thing. I would have changed nothing.
Again I can't say enough good things about NYU, Dr. Golfinos, his staff and all the people that work in the gamma knife center. Every single one of them are wonderful people that actually care. God bless them all.
