Our cancer journey

 Like a picture slowly coming into focus, Eric is improving every day. He is talking more, awake more, more like himself. He is still confused about some things that would not have previously confused him and has some word-finding difficulties, but night and day compared to three weeks ago. It turns out patience is the best medicine for anxious wives. The speech therapist has been working wonders.  Regarding the tumor, we have mostly good news! It is a stage 2 oligodendroglioma. It has an IDH2 mutation (will respond to targeted therapies when needed), a TERT promoter variant, and the 1p/19q codeletion that is the hallmark of the less aggressive oligo (versus an astrocytoma, which has worse prognosis). This is overall good news (though TERT promoters may worsen prognosis in higher grade tumors, as far as I can tell, they don't impact prognosis for low grade oligos). This means that with all these favorable genetics, the median survival may be over 15 years, and that was before ...

 I shouldn't complain. Things are actually good. The post-op MRI looked good. The surgeon thinks he got the whole thing out. If it turns out to be an oligodendroglioma (which he thought it looked like, fingers crossed), then the plan will likely just be frequent MRI monitoring for recurrence, without need for chemo/radiation/biologics.  However, life has changed. I knew that brain surgery was a big deal, but I guess I was hopeful that it wouldn't take long for Eric to feel like himself again. However, that hasn't been the reality. He is talking a little more, but still has a lot of aphasia (word finding difficulties, jumbled sentences, trouble focusing on conversations). He is moving well, except for a little left-sided neglect and some balance issues. He is getting home PT, OT, and will be getting speech starting next week. He sleeps about 16 hours per day, though, and when he is awake, he moves around a bit like a ghost. He is like the PS2 version of his usual PS5 self. T...