- Why This Is Here
- Just a Headache
- This Sucks. Now What?
- Meet the Brain Surgeons
- I Have Some Questions
- Time Has Come Today
- Into The Void
- The Waiting Is The Hardest Part
- Hotel de Brain Surgery
- Living In The Limelight
- Homecoming King
- At Least You’re Tall
- Time Heals, Sort Of
- Plastic Fantastic Surgery
- This Is The End
Contact me: tracysigler@gmail.com
Some people call it "brain surgery." I prefer to think of it as an attitude adjustment. Keep on keepin' on.
A perfectly good head, at least that's what my mother says, before my encounter with Dr. Nutcracker. At this point haircuts are still on schedule.
Where's Waldo? Look in the third ventricle kids. That white spot in the middle is the colloid cyst and the source of my headaches.
View of the colloid cyst from the side. It's small, but it can be deadly. In my case it was a headache that would last for weeks and would occur a few times a year.
This is my angry face! RRRRrrrr!!! That white blob is the dermoid cyst. It started behind my nose and went well into the brain behind my forehead.
View of the dermoid cyst from the side. From the size of it you would think this would be the source of my headaches, but it wasn't. In fact, my headaches were always on the other side of my head.
Can't get enough of that dermoid stuff. Right on the midline. These occur more often in people with wideset eyes. Mine are wider apart than average.
This is what the fiber optics of the endoscopic send back to the monitor. Not easy to see what you're doing I should I think.
Scary movie. No, that's not a fork in my head. This picture is from the endoscope. Click to see the larger image and the video from which it was taken. There are some long pauses, but you'll notice they also captured video when the scope was outside of my head. My bare skull is visible and my scalp is stretched apart.
That small dark spot is where the tumor is starting wear a hole in the top of my brain.
Dermoid Cyst you gots to go! Digging in. The retractors in this picture are about the size of your little finger.
Stuff floats. The surgeon is using water to flush out some of the dermoid cyst material that has been broken loose. Image and video.
Covering the brain with a sponge to protect the exposed area while surgery continues. The movie shows a lot of digging to remove the dermoid cyst. Image and video.
If you think brain surgery sucks you're right. The surgeon continues to remove the cyst material with this "vacuum."
The blue sleeved instrument here is cauterizing. Good thing the brain doesn't feel pain because there was a lot of cauterizing throughout the surgery. Sizzle. Image and video.
Journey to the center... Most the dermoid cyst is gone and we're nearing the area behind my nose. That's a sponge over my brain in the foreground.
Piercing fanatic? No, just a guy who had a bicoronal incision and now has a lot staples to hold it together. The sore on the right of this picture is where a temporary shunt was installed to mitigate any swelling in the brain. The shunt was gone after a couple days.
Looking good! Less than a week after surgery. Can't get a haircut or sleep well with staples sticking out of your head.
The staples are gone but a ridge of flesh remains thanks to the sutures below the surface. As the sutures dissolve this ridge will flatten.
This MRI was done about eight weeks after surgery. The colloid cyst is still visible. They were able to remove only 50% without excessive risk.
A view from the top. Actually I think it's from the bottom. What's missing? No jokes. That's right. The dermoid cyst is all gone.
This is my happy face. I'm smiling on the inside, where it counts. No more dermoid, and I think my haircut is recent.
I seriously need a haircut. Other than that my head looks pretty good at seven months past the surgery. Hard to see the dent in this pic.
Seven months after the brain surgery. Another view of the dent that's bugging me.
Scratch and dent. At least I've had a haircut. This is eight months after brain surgery and about an hour before the fat relocation.
A little fat makes a lot of difference. This was taken the same of the first plastic surgery. Two thirds of the fat will be absorbed and the dent will become visible again.
Exactly eight weeks after the first plastic surgery and on the morning before the second. It's hard for me to tell, but I think it looks a little better.
This is as good as it gets baby! Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. This was taken a few months after the second plastic surgery/fat injection to fill the dent.
G and me (I'm on the right) out for a ride over Christmas 2004, almost one year after my brain surgery. As my brother Grayson put it, "the good news is they did find a brain." Maybe it runs in the family.