After MUCH consideration, I'm flying out to L.A. and having the endoscopic procedure with Dr. Shahinian at the Skull Base Institute. I talked to him on Monday afternoon, and he didn't try to "sell" the procedure any more than anyone else has tried to sell theirs, except that he's obviously and passionately in favor of his approach. The fact that it's so much less less invasive and that if I have the procedure on Wednesday I can fly home Saturday (even though I have friends and will stick around L.A. a little longer) and my recovery time willl be so much less--I do think that endoscopy is the wave of the future. And that's from my reading, not from Dr. Shahinian. The big downside is that they don't take Medicare, therefore my secondary insurace won't pay, and I will be out a chunk of change. But as my son said, "if you ended up with even one of the side effects you've told me about, you'd be willing to pay more than that to get these things back and it would be too late." One of the biggest selling features too was that his othr specialty is Trigeminal Neuralgia, and the TN is the only reason I'm doing surgery at all! He took the time to read my MRI carefully before phoning me, and took a long time to explain that, even though 1.4x1.3x1.4 seems small, it's in the "class 2" range, and since my hearing in the affected ear is so deficient in the higher ranges he will have less chance of saving the hearing. I was sad, but the other docs never said that. At least I'm not going in like Pollyanna, thinking I'm going to leap off the table and resume my life exactly as it is now.
So--my date is over two months away, Oct. 14. That way I can go to my niece's wedding in Denver, meet lots of you at the symposium down the street from my dwelling, hike in the Cotswolds, and visit some friends in their Wisconsin cottage. I'm looking forward to a busy summer! Then fly to L.A., have a hold bored into my head, and we shall see what happens after than.
Sharon
