Aaron M. Hoover, PhD

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Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!

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Last Friday, I had my one-month post-radiation follow-up. The Tuesday prior, big R and I had a lovely date night in Waltham (shout out to Balani!). Of course, we capped it all off with a 9:30pm MRI (my first since radiation ended) at the MGH facility there.

Not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous. It didn’t help that I had to sit in a waiting room for 35 minutes with an IV in my arm. By the time the nurse pushed the contrast (midway through the MRI), my arm was aching. I was ready to get the hell out of there.

Well, it turns out my patience paid off. To the utter and absolute surprise of everyone at the follow-up (me, big R, my mom, and even my neuro oncologist), my scan was clean. Clean. As in, they could not definitively detect evidence of tumor!

Here, check it out:

  • Pre-surgery tumor image
  • 1 day post-surgery. The arrow highlights the resection cavity, and the adjacent lighter material is remaining tumor.
  • Swelling is down, no discernible tumor.

All of the above images are looking “up” from below my head. The tumor was in my right temporal lobe but appears on the left in the images. The first image on the left shows the largest cross section of the tumor and is from a slice about 10mm “higher” than the images on the right. The second image is from one day post-surgery. Look how ridiculously swollen my face and brain are! The last image is from last Tuesday. That little bit of anatomy in the middle of all the images is the brain stem, and it’s nice that it’s not all squished (technical term) by the tumor and/or the swelling any longer.

All of this is certainly cause for celebration, but we are still talking about an incurable cancer. So, there remains a crap-ton to do to fight to prevent recurrence and progression. On the other, other hand, my radiation oncologist actually said “We couldn’t have hoped for it to look any better.” Hell yeah!

Onward and upward!

17 Responses

  1. Dude! I’ve been nervous for you. So glad to hear the treatment has been this effective. Now, get on your bike. We have some miles to catch up on in the next month.

    Reply

  3. Wow!! So so so great! When oncologists are excited by results, that is a huge time to celebrate!!

    Reply

  5. Wow that is AMAZING! Well done Aaron and Med team! Massive swelling post surgery is right. From my in-law’s kitchen table ( w/ retina display ) 2xZoom glasses i certainly can see nothing but the appearance of normal grey matter. Not even scar tissue in that area. Curious if the adjacent tissue fills the void that quickly or what (i.e decompresses?) but man great, great news. I sure hope your swelling/pain continue to improve in your rest cycle my friend. Big hugs to all!

    Reply

  13. from someone who has lived nowhere other than the Boston area … best news EVAH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply

  17. Amazing Aaron, just amazing. That latest MRI is just unbelievable. Your mega positive attitude and approach to managing this whole mess is inspiring!

    Reply

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