We saw a neurosurgeon, and he said that it was probably a meningioma (which it did turn out to be). He explained that the tumor could cause some symptoms she was experiencing (loss of strength and coordination, problems with balance, etc.), but that it was on the wrong side (and too far back) to be causing the particular numbness she was experiencing (jawline to hairline on the left side of her face).

After another set of MRI scans and an MRA-COW, the neurosurgeon and radiologist agreed that there was no visible cause for the numbness. Their best guess was that it was an intermittent flare-up of a virus in the trigeminal nerve.

Still, there was that pesky tumor causing other problems, and it was only going to get bigger… so we scheduled surgery.

The neurosurgeon said that they would not need to shave her head–that they could shave just a small area on the right side of her head, and that she would be able to wear her hair over the incision/stitches. Unfortunately, the tech that was in charge that morning didn’t get the message. He shaved her bald. The surgeon was not pleased. Kim was a good sport about it, saying she had always wanted to shave her head, but never had an excuse before.

The surgery took about four hours, and the only status updates we got were “everyone still looks very busy in the operating room”. Apparently it is considered bad form to interrupt neurosurgery to ask “are you done yet?” We decided that was better than “everybody is hanging their heads sadly in the operating room” or “everybody is shouting and waving their arms in the operating room.”

The tumor came out in one piece, and was benign. They replaced the removed section of her skull with a wire mesh and the fragments of skull that they removed. Now that she has metal in her head, she can’t get an MRI, so this post-op image is a CT scan.

Here is a photo of the stitched up incision.

We expect her home tomorrow (Monday).

I took many photos of my family and other Lagoonishness.

I think this is my favorite:

I posted a selection of other favorites on Flickr.

We spent $70 on bowling, but didn’t manage to get the required score. I disapprove of that grading system, but I enjoyed bowling with my family. I intend to talk to the teacher about the possibility of an alternate assignment.

After bowling, we went to IHOP. Here’s a picture of my son drinking through an IHOP crazy straw.

He wrote many stories about his life, which I have begun to post on his posthumous blog at allenthrower.com. There’s also a page about Allen Thrower for anyone interested.

My instructions for this photo were "go stand by that fence." (No, he’s not actually beating her with a bottle of water in a sock, but that was the effect he was going for.)

Mum’s the word (because I can’t spell chrysanthemum).

Eureka! Eureka! Eureka! Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!

I’d allow them to run ahead to the next corner while I went at my own speed and took pictures. They got bored while waiting at this corner. This is just a candid photo.

This is my youngest daughter. It looks like she’s completely shocked by something in the sky, but really she’s pointing at a stop sign that she sounded out, saying "STOP!"

Other photos from the day (and from at least one other trip) are in my Lagoon photoset on Flickr.

At one point during our visit, we were outside and it started raining, so we stood on the covered porch. I took pictures. Here’s one of my son:

Here’s another. A water droplet that made its way through the roof fell between us as I was taking the picture.

My mom likes cats, but since the cat we had when I was a child finally died, she hasn’t kept one as a pet. Instead, she feeds strays and lets them hang around outside the house. She says the neighborhood kids named this one “Star Wars”:

My parents:

While I was taking pictures of my parents, it was of course vital that my nine year old son do bunny ears.

And here’s a picture of my dad:

Also, I got a digital SLR camera recently.

That mostly worked out, but it seems that the magenta dye reacted badly and wouldn’t stick to the eggs. As a result, any eggs we put in the purple dye were almost indistinguishable from eggs we put in the blue dye, and the eggs we put in the magenta dye came out with light magenta speckling.

This egg was placed in the magenta dye, then incidentally got moved between a couple different drying plates. It ended up picking up some nice coloring completely by accident.

Here’s her self-portrait, and a photo of her (taken just a little while after the drawing). She cut out the self-portrait before I got it to the scanner.

After a few drawings, I asked her if she’d draw a dragon. She said she didn’t know how, but I asked her to try anyway. About a minute later, she came back with this:

She also drew a butterfly and a flower. She draws butterflies all the time. Sometimes she draws them with chalk on the driveway, and once she drew one on the garage door.

My wife asked my son to draw a dragon so we could see how an eight year old draws dragons. Here’s what he came up with. He’s not really satisfied with it, and said he might try again.

He says it’s in a crystal ball, and that people are looking at it.

It’s not very carefully edited.

About the time we got to the hot and stinky reptile exhibit, we decided to split up and I got to explore the zoo one-on-one with my son.

In addition to the regular attractions, we discovered thousands of tiny caterpillars climbing all over things.

We probably spent more time watching them than we spent looking at official exhibits.

While watching caterpillars, people passing by would occasionally see a caterpillar hanging from a silk strand (seeming to float in mid-air), but they didn’t seem to notice the hundreds of caterpillars on the fence. At one point, some kids noticed the floating caterpillar, yanked it down, and stomped on it. I yelled “hey!” and they scurried off without looking back. I’m not sure they even knew the “hey” was directed at them. My son and I expressed our disapproval to each other, but didn’t dwell on it long.

My son managed to coax a caterpillar onto his finger splint. (He slammed his finger in the bathroom door the night before. It wasn’t serious, and it’s fine now.)

After drawing Snoopy, I realized there was an opportunity for more, so I unfolded it:

My favorite part was making Snoopy say “Dude.”

This is my son’s Halloween costume this year.

A red leaf from the tree in our front yard.

This grasshopper is missing a leg.

This picture was taken while waiting in an emergency room a couple years ago. My son had accidentally stabbed a shard of broken glass into his leg, and was waiting to get stitches. He still has a big scar. Counting the lines on the scar, it looks like he got six stitches.