Taking the fight to it.

So for all intents and purposes my treatment would consist of 30 x 60gy sessions of radical radiotherapy, and that’s all. My neurosurgeon didn’t want to take the risk of removing anymore tumour, and my PCT were too busy worshiping the dollar to give me my life-preserving drug. And that’s when Francesca and her mother had the great idea of getting a second opinion in Italy.
A few years prior, Francesca’s mother developed an excruciatingly painful but benign tumour on her spine. A radical neurosurgeon called Aldo Spallone safely removed said tumour, and a few weeks later she was walking again. Anyway, she suggested that I meet this Prof. Spallone to see if there was any alternative in Italy to the UK’s ‘suck-it-and-see’ fingers-crossed approach. This idea was met with some disconcertion by my consultant oncologist, who believed that Prof. Spallone was too radical a surgeon. He added that if I insisted on looking for second opinions abroad I should consider two surgeons that he was familiar with and confident in. I took his suggestion on board and accepted his offer.
A flurry of e-mails with copied MRI slides followed, and two weeks later (15/12/2006) I was sitting in Prof Spallone’s office in the Neurological Center of Latinum (NCL) in the outskirts of Rome.
Spallone was an impressive man, almost identical in appearance to the actor from Criminal Minds, Mandy Patinkin.
In conversation, I soon discovered that he had been a practicing neurosurgeon for a considerable number of years having completed his training in the now defunct Soviet Union. Indeed, he had travelled far and wide performing surgery, and had patients in Cuba to his credentials. His private clinic was impressive as well; an immaculate three-storey building in its own grounds, built in the 70’s, with nursing staff dressed in traditional white uniforms.
Part of the consultation fee included an MRI. This was a little too noisy, as they didn’t supply headphones or earplugs. Later, upon studying the images, the professor agreed on the tumour’s classification and stated that he could remove all if not most of it. However, he added that there was always going to be a risk of a complication. For example, he would be working around some major blood vessels, and nicking one of them would mean ‘goodnight Vienna’ for me. Nonetheless, he was confident that he could carry out the surgery, and emphasised that he had performed the procedure a number of times before. I now had another option. I was taking the fight to it!