But I kid. Karl did meet with the plastic surgeon on Tuesday. Karl has two options for replacing the part of his skull that was removed due to the infection. The first is they could put a plastic piece in place. This is certainly less invasive than the other option but I guess this sort of operation has a high risk of infection. Given the fact that Karl has already had one infection this may not be a good route to take. The second option involves bone and skin grafts and essentially creating a new skull from the existing skull. I don't quite understand how this works but I couldn't get a hold of Karl last night. This surgery would take upwards of twelve hours...
Either way, Karl has roughly one more week of treatment and they wont be able to perform the surgery until at least four weeks after his last treatment. They have to allow time for the skin to heal. This was tough news because Karl is very sick of having to wear that stupid helmet.
We did receive some good news though, my mom heard back yesterday from an organization that helps patients cover medical expenses. They said they can provide some help for Karl's bills. We don't know exactly how much "some" is but I'm quite certain that some is more than none. This is particularly helpful because Karl's monthly insurance payments increased with the new year.
One quick update on his actual treatments, up until this point the radiation (from Marvin the Martian's gun) was more broad sweeping. I guess the remainder of his treatments will be more concentrated on the specific area where the tumor is.
I think that's all for now...
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