its not cancer

on tuesday i met with the radiation doctor.  tuesdays are doctor days.
i had questions for him, most of which i told the nurse and then promptly forgot once the doctor came in.  luckily the nurse was able to prompt me when i would forget.
he showed me the treatment plan.  this is a my interpretation of what the treatment plan looked like.  the purple box is where the highest dosage of radiation is hitting.  oh, i should say that those are my eyeballs on the top and my ears on the sides.  he explained it as being like a topographic map.  each line signifies a drop in radiation dosage.  the closer the lines, the steeper the drop.  there were more lines in the plan, but this is the gist.  the areas that are by the red line, that are closest to the edges are where i will possibly lose my hair.

then i flat out asked him, or told him, that i do not have cancer.  i said, even though i am at swedish cancer institute and they gave me a ton of information about cancer and they keep calling it cancer i was just like, i don't have cancer.  right?  correct.  i do not have cancer.  he said that they normally just call anything in the brain a tumor, well, anything that originates in the brain.  i may be wrong here, but the way i understand it is that benign brain tumors start in the brain and stay there.  they do not spread to other parts of the brain, they don' go anywhere.  my tumor acts malignant because it can come back and it can push it self against other parts of the brain and can cause all kinds of problems.  it is not malignant because it does not spread.  but brain tumors spread by way of spinal fluid so if they spread they only go to other parts of the brain or the spinal column.  if i am correct, and i may very well not be, they call it brain cancer if the cancer originate somewhere else and travels to the brain.    there are certain cancers that are more likely to travel to the brain than others.  i guess.
like i said, all of this could be 100% wrong but its how i understood it when he explained it to me.
the doctor had his fingers taped.  i asked him if he broke his fingers, sure 'nuffs he had, hammered them and smashed them.  lots more questions about that to be asked on this coming tuesday.

oh good gracious, today i was so tired but i headed out on a bike ride.  it was 80 degrees and sunny and amazing.  i was planning on driving to the trail head.  for the life of me, i could not get the front wheel off of my bike.  i flipped the brake thingy, i loosened the skewer.  i loosened it so much that the one piece fell off!  i could not get that wheel off.  i had to go ask eric for help.  i was really worried i was having a serious brain tumor moment.  why couldn't i get the wheel off, i was actually very concerned.  luckily when eric came to help, he couldn't get the wheel off either!  hooray!  it wasn't me.  he just banged the wheel and off it popped!