I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

It's Friday 11/13/15 and I have now met Lawrence the neurosurgeon who will be striking out on a daring camel journey across the harsh Arabian desert performing my brain surgery. For the first time I feel like I mostly understand what is going on. In turn I now understand that we did not previously understand what we were being told. The most significant of these errors is that we thought it had been determined with finality that the tumor was benign and not cancerous.

A few of you were intelligent enough to ask why I would need a biopsy if it was benign (Hi Aunt Judy!) and I probably would've asked the same but each of my visits with the neurosurgeons have been a blur. The neurosurgeons themselves have been very helpful and comprehensive and I've had an amazing support team taking notes (among other things) but when one receive news of this nature it can be very difficult to hear or process the information that follows.

So here's what we now know:

• Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time.
• The blood test results I referred to in my previous post showed that the cancer markers came back normal which usually mean the tumor is not malignant. So it was still good news.
• I have surgery tentatively scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, November 18th (assuming full availability of necessary equipment).
• The surgery will be 'minimally invasive,' entering from a small incision on the front right quarter of the basketball on my neck.
• Jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
• The primary function of the surgery will be the biopsy, however the neurosurgeon will have the flexibility to evaluate it on the fly and, if he determine's it's safe, perform the debulking all in one shot. This would be ideal and is mostly based on whether or not there is brain swelling.
• Regardless, the biopsy will determine what type of tumor this is and how it will need to be treated. Again, none of the previous tumor types or treatment possibilities have been eliminated after all.
• The tumor is located in the tectum/tectal plate/pineal region of the brain. The name for what I have is Pineoblastoma. Here, I'll save you the trouble.
• My receiving a permanent shunt is not an inevitability after all (yay!). If it can be done safely my neurosurgeon may attempt to carve out a passage which would re-route the fluid being blocked by the tumor. My neurosurgeon estimated there was a 75% chance this would work out (double yay!).
• My upcoming surgery has only a 2% chance of stroke/bleeding/infection/brain injury/etc. I can definitely live with 2%, Does a body good. (Sorry, I have no self control).
• I'll have up to 5 days in the hospital and I'll be out of work for roughly two months. Fortunately there will be some crossover with the holidays.
• One of these men is the next President of the United States. The other is Donald Trump.

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Why is this blog called "Fatlanta?"
• I registered the name in like 2008 because it was amusing to me. When preparing my initial post I wanted to use Blogger aka Blogspot because it allows me to write in long form and insert pictures throughout and one does not need to be my Facebook friend to read it. I logged in to Blogger/Blogspot to prepare it and couldn't think of a title for the blog. I saw my abandoned blogs from years past including this. I had never posted on "fatlanta" and went with it... sorry, no special meaning. But it's still amusing to me.
• Is it FAT-lanta or F-Atlanta?
• This question made me laugh.
• Do they know what caused your tumor?
• No. They probably won't and there may not actually be a specific cause. This does not bother me - it won't change anything and I won't have to spend the rest of my life regretting something stupid I did. It would be nice for me to be able to tell people "hey don't do (this thing) or else you'll get a brain tumor like I did" but otherwise I'm apathetic.
• How are you feeling?
• I'm mostly feeling fine. The steroids (or something) have done a lot to stop the symptoms I've been dealing with for the past few months so in a way I'm feeling a lot better than usual. Just light-headed and shaky. 
• What is your quest?
• I seek the grail.
• What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
• What do you mean, African or European swallow?
• What is the long term prognosis? What are the long term effects?
• This is completely tied to what they find in the biopsy. I cannot begin to go through all of the different possibilities.
• As your wife I demand you include the story about the priest in your next blog post. This is not a question, just find a way to do it or else I'm not driving you back to Barnes and Noble or Dunkin Donuts.
• Oh. OK then. A testament to the power of the internet and the ways in which news spreads... last night wife, mom, mother-in-law, mom's bestie and I attended a Healing Mass at the church. The Priest who married us is performing the service. He's neither our Facebook friend nor the Facebook friend of anyone we know and for all I know our presence at the Mass is the moment he's learning of my battle with BKP. He is anointing us with oil on the altar, it's very emotional, very solemn, he pulls us in close and whispers "please, no sax in church." Absolutely hilarious.
• I am not your Facebook friend. How will I know when you've made a new post about sacking Bernard Karmell Pollard?
• You can add me on Facebook... just click here.
• No, I meant I literally don't have a Facebook.
• I lack the self-importance required to create a mailing list but I'm open to ideas. In the meantime, just check in at fatlanta.blogspot.com or send me an email: pauljrehm@gmail.com
• You'll be out of work for two months and rarely able to leave the house. What will you do with your time?
• I have an awful habit of buying books which look interesting to me despite not having read dozens of books I already own. So hopefully I'll catch up on those and hang out with my dog while avoiding her devious attempts to kill me. As Groucho Marx said, outside of a dog a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's way too dark to read.
• Wait, your dog is plotting to kill you? Are you aware your tumor bears a strong resemblance to your dog?
• Holy. Shit.