by Leroy Sievers

This may all have been a mistake. I may very well not have a new brain tumor.

If having cancer is like a roller coaster ride, I'm on the wildest coaster there is. I was waiting to hear about scheduling the gamma knife procedure. I was a little impatient; I just wanted to get it done as soon as possible. And then my doctor called with very different news.

This may all have been a mistake. I may very well not have a new brain tumor. If yesterday's news was like the biggest drop ever on a roller coaster, this was like doing a complete circle. The doctors spent the morning going over all the scans that I have had over the last six months or so. The MRI essentially takes slices of you; it takes pictures every five millimeters. It takes pictures horizontally and also vertically. The problem was that what appeared to be a new tumor was smaller than that; it literally slipped between the cracks.

When they compared all the scans, and all the pictures both vertical and horizontal, the consensus seems to be now that whatever they are seeing, it's not something new. It's probably scar tissue from the first tumor and the operation to remove it. We'll do a new MRI in four weeks to see if it has changed at all. There is also no swelling around it, which reinforces the idea that it's nothing new.

My doctor apologized, but I honestly feel there is nothing to apologize for at all. First, I'd rather err on the side of pessimism, and then find out that you're wrong. So I've spent the morning trying to reach all those people whom I gave bad news to yesterday, and telling them today's good news. And that includes all of you. I am so grateful for all of the notes of support that you all sent in. Those notes are worth everything, whether I have a new tumor or not.

So I guess I'm back to where I was two days ago, saying I apparently have no active tumors. As Gilda Radner's character used to say in the very early days of Saturday Night Live, "Never mind."