I had my consultation yesterday at the Mayo Clinic with Dr. Michael Link, neurosurgeon. It was a very positive experience. Most importantly, I feel complete confidence in Dr. Link based on both his considerable experience treating ANs and his direct and warm manner. After reviewing my MRI he said that based on the size of the tumor (5-7mm) and my age (68) I could freely choose any of the three options: surgery (it would be retrosigmoid), radiation (it would be Gamma-Knife) or wait and watch. So I have decided to wait for now, until June when we will do a 6-month follow up MRI. And when the time comes for treatment, I will have radiation not surgery, which is what I have been hoping I could do.
It feels very good to have some things settled and to be able to stop obsessing about this for a while. I am going to at least look into the option of Cyber-Knife, but I'm already pretty attached to Dr. Link.
One other thing has become clear to me during these six weeks since my AN was discovered. From the reading I have done on this site, especially after studying the survey, I am expecting hearing in my AN ear to worsen no matter what I do and eventually be gone completely. Dr. Link concurred with this assessment. It seems only a tiny fraction of us are lucky enough to retain useful hearing indefinitely. Correct me if you think I'm mistaken.
I'm hoping that the rate of hearing loss might be slower while I'm waiting and watching. But I've pretty much resigned myself to single-sided deafness down the road. As a musician that upset me for a while. But I have learned that SSD has not stopped musicians from playing.
Some of the other possible AN complications seem like they would be a bigger challenge, but they also seem to be less common. So I'm not going to worry about them now.
After this post I'm moving to the watch and wait area. I encourage all newbies to take this one day at a time, get the best information you can, don't assume your story will be like any you read, and trust you feelings.
