Marilynn Eiken

My husband had a mole on his back that I had encouraged him to get looked at for about a year. When I finally got mean about it, he went and thus was diagnosed with melanoma. It was surgically removed with no sentinal node involvement, no mitosis under microscope, and measured 1.0. We had a very good prognosis and went about our lives. This summer Tye started complaining of a stiff neck with a headache. We did some chiropractic and other conservative treatment which helped but never quite made the headaches go away for very long. About a month later while on vacation, Tye passed out face first into the pavement of a St Paul zoo. We went by ambulance and had him checked and it was deemed a “multifactoral vaso-vagal episode.” It made sense. He hadn’t eaten, had been driving for several hours, made a sudden bend at the waist motion and down he went. Two weeks later he did it again but without passing out or hurting himself. We followed up shortly after and an MRI showed a notable lesion to the right temporal region and 2 lesions in the frontal lobe. Mayo had us up the next day and their radiologists were skeptical of the frontal lesions. Surgery was planned for the temporal tumor the following Friday. It has been excised successfully and we go back the end of this month to further investigate the questionable areas of the frontal lobe and to radiate the excised area due to an artery that was running through that tumor. The are concerned for microscopic cells on that vessel. Surgery went very well and now it’s just a hurry up and wait situation.