Good news

My buddy Cooper went into the hospital a couple of days ago for brain surgery.

He has had persistent headaches for the past few years, and finally had something done about it a couple of weeks ago. He underwent an operation where they used some kind of router to clear out his sinus cavities. (Kind of like getting your head ported and polished.)

He came out of that with a voice that sounded kind of like Dennis Leary, and he still didn't appear to feel very well.



Last Saturday, he started getting dizzy and sick. He went to the emergency room where a scan was done, and they found a brain tumor. (By the way, hearing that one of your best friends has a brain tumor is about like getting hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. Not cool.)

Doctors were 85% sure that the tumor was benign, and were confident they could get the tumor out. His family was pretty upbeat, considering the situation.

Yesterday he went into surgery, while a lot of people prayed for him. It apparently went well. The latest word is that the tumor is gone, and that Cooper is hungry, wants some coffee, his iPod, his Blackberry, and to go home.

Some (including Cooper) were concerned about possible after-effects of the surgery. Motor skills can be affected by brain operations, as can higher functions. Cooper seems to be okay, with the following notables:

1. He is now left-handed.
2. He can calculate pi out to 243,182 digits in his head.
3. He is terrified of clouds.
4. He has lost awareness of 2 letters of the alphabet: "K" and "L", and words containing them.
5. No matter where you are in the world, if you tune your FM radio to 88.5, you can hear his thoughts (in French).

#1 can be remedied with intense therapy.
#2 is a handy thing to be able to do, especially if you're an architect.
#3 and #5 can be accounted for by wearing a metal hat.
#4 is not really an issue since he's known only by the name "Cooper" (kind of like Cher is only known by one name) and it contains neither of the lost letters.

The good news is that after so long having headaches, he's likely to feel really good now. The clean sinus cavities he has now are a bonus.