Neursurgeon #1

We first met with Dr. Neil Martin, a big wig, at UCLA Medical center. He came as a recommendations from one of our friends that used him to remove her tumor when she was 8 months pregnant with twins! (no one else would touch her, but Dr. Martin saved the day!)
He reviewed the MRI and indicated that Mark had a brain tumor and that it needed to come out. Before making decisions on how to remove it, he ordered a functional MRI . This kind of MRI can take pictures of the brain while you are thinking of things so they can measure the blood flow in certain areas and can tell specifically where your speech center is, your spatial center, etc. I also asked about the possibility of it being a tumor that spread from somewhere else. He said he didn't think it was a metastatic tumor, but did order a chest xray to see if there were any possible tumors there. The bad news was that Dr. Martin was going out of town and we wouldn't be able to hear his plan of surgery until the end of October!