MRI in Bangkok
Dec 30, 2006
From: John Wolford
Date: Dec 30, 2006 11:28 PM
Subject: we're coming back early
Hi All,
I don't know if any of you have heard any of this, so i'm going to pretend you haven't. Dhalie & i have had an amazing time together, and as the time went on it got more and more amazing. I'm not going to get into all of that right now, i have a more pointed purpose to this letter.
During the 20-day that i was serving and Dhalie was sitting, at the Vipassana centre named Dhamma Mandala, in Mandalay, Burma, i started getting a slight headache. For 3 days after the course it continued, while Dhalie & i had some of the most amazing days of our lives. Then, 3 days after the course, as we we got to the Manadaly airport to fly back to Yangon to meet up with Anna, and receive Mom & Yvonne, my headache went into "high" mode, and a few times my vision went wonky, i threw up and then i would feel much better for a short time. We almost didn't get on the plane but in the end we did. We met Anna in Yangon and we visited a doctor (who is family of the beautiful people who ran the hotel we were staying at) - actually it was 2 doctors, husband and wife, aunt & uncle of the owners of our hotel - and they set us up in short order with an appointment with a local neurologist. All of the doctors were really nice - maybe "sweet" is the better word. The neurologoist told us that the equipment in Burma wouldn't be good enough for what we needed and advised us to go to Bangkok, where everything is really modern (and cheap, and FAST). So the next day we (Dhalie, Anna & i) flew to Bangkok, where i'm writing this from right now - that was yesterday that we arrived. Before leaving we made an appointment at a MRI place for the day after we arrived, but we decided to try it same day. We got there and yes, we got the appoinmtent straight away, and it happened, and the MRI person (i forget the name of that position just now) was kind enough to look over our previous mri pics that we brough on CD and then compare them with the ones he just took, and tell us about the changes. Changes there are: a part of the tumour has become "enhanced", which means it's turned into a higher grade, maybe we just say "high grade". So this is quite important, and it means that Dhalie & i need to come home straight away so we can sort out the next step - chemo, radiation or both - with our "home doctors". It will be one or both of those. I do believe this is the end of our trip, and what an amazing trip/time/experience this has been for us. Really, blessings, blessings, it's really something.
So i think that does it. There's TONS i haven't said here, whch i loook forward to being able to say, but Mom & Yvonne will be arriving very shrtly.
Lots of love, and please feel free to forward this on to anyone you think of. I'm sure i've forgotten to include various ppl that i would love to send this to.
See many of you soon :-)
jw
