To deaths door and back. The end of the blog. Written by Jeff

I am alive and back at home. It was quite an ordeal and I will pray that no one that I know will ever have to go through it. I want to close the blog and give a detailed description of what I went through and then just say thank you for all the prayers and well wishes that helped bring me through.
6:00am check in at St. Mary's Hospital(Mayo) It is reported to be the largest hospital in the country. Line was 20 deep at 5:50am and people were still lining up.
7:00am in a holding room getting quizzed by nurses preparing me to get to the prep room.
7:15am left Kim and my sister Ann behind heading to be prepped for surgery.
A super nice young resident anesthesiologist did all the prep. IV's in both wrists, IV's in both forearms, 6 shaved spots on my chest where electrodes were placed. Another spot shaved on my chest for a line he said he would start when I went under. As I lay there I was scared I may not wake back up because I was told the week before by the surgeon what they would be doing. On the wall right in front of me was a crucifix, and I had a very good conversation with Christ. It is private though.
8:00 down the hall and off to OR. In the OR was a team of maybe 10 people. As they moved me to the OR table a nurse in maybe her mid 50's said I would do great. This team removes brain tumors every week and Dr. Link was awesome. I felt a little better. Then the head anesthesiologist gave me a mask and said take a few deep breaths and I remembered nothing. Kim and Ann would be given updates all day. As family from other patients in surgery would hear that their family was in recovery room whatever, Kim and Ann would get updates for 8 hours. The surgery has started, they are opening, Dr. Link has him under the microscope, they are closing, etc. I was asleep and going through the procedure as they sat for 8+ long hours waiting and waiting.
At about 4:00pm I remember Dr. Link tell me that the surgery was over and it went great, but I could not see him. I then remember waking and puking and falling back asleep for the next several hours. At that point you're not really sure you wanted to live. The next afternoon I got out of ICU and into my own room and things got slowly better until they let me out Sunday afternoon.
The young resident anesthesiologist came in at day 2 after surgery and wanted to know the last thing I remembered and the first thing I remembered upon awaking. He has to chart how well he does during his residency. After explaining to him how well he had done, I asked him to tell me what they did in surgery, everything. So he did. He told me that the first thing they did was paralyze every part of my body except my heart. Put a vent down my throat to work my lungs. Then they secured my head in an apparatus he called a halo. It is a device that screws to the front and back of your head so that when locked in position your head cannot even move a mm during surgery. Then the OR table converts to a chair and my body and the halo are locked in a slightly forward sitting position for the entire 8 hours. No wonder my butt was so sore for 2 days. Then the resident Neurosurgeon Dr. Ball, another awesome young Dr. opened the back of my head from the base of my skull to the top of my spine. He had to remove a third of the top 2 vertebral bones, said I will never miss them, separate the muscle and tissue and use expanders to give the head surgeon a window approximately 4 inches wide by 5 inches long so he could see the entire tumor as he worked. Then Dr. Link wearing a microscopic head gear spent nearly 6 hours removing the tumor. Luckily it came away from the brain stem and spine without incident. Came off of the vertebral artery that it had engulfed and Dr. Link only had to remove the lining of my cerebellum to get it all. Then a tissue graph was taken from my leg to fill in on the cerebellum and Dr. Ball closed the incision he had made. Gross and amazing at the same time. The young anesthesiologist said that 20 years ago they did not have the ability to do this. He also informed me that the line he started on my chest was in place to remove air from my heart if needed. He said that operating for that long in a sitting position with such a large opening in my head has a good risk of air getting in my head and going to my heart. 1 anesthesiologist spent the whole surgery listening to my heart for air. Never happened I guess. The surgery has a much better success rate when performed in a sitting position but has more risk during surgery. It is over and I am home and that is all that is important now. I am alive and can see my kids and in a couple months should be totally finished with this. What an amazing team of Doctors at Mayo. So again thanks for all your prayers they were heard and now you can call Kim or myself and get back to normal things.