An Unexpected Turn of Events

For the last few weeks Dale has been suffering from severe headaches, extremely high blood pressure, troubles with speech and vision. Mary took him into Ridgeview Medical in Waconia on Monday the 27th where they learned that Dale has a grapefruit sized tumor located behind his left ear. He was transferred to Methodist hospital. Dale had a biopsy yesterday and the initial results confirm the neurosurgeons beliefs that he has stage 4 Glioblastoma also known as GBM. Unfortunately this type of cancer has no cure. 

During the biopsy procedure when Dale was coming off the anesthesia he was saying that he was having chest pains they did an EKG and it showed he was having a mild heart attack. This is not related to the cancer and they will continue to monitor it as necessary. UPDATE: I talked with Mary  today she stated that Dale was still feeling the affects of the heart attack. So the doctors did give him some more pain medication to help him relax and hopefully get some rest. 

Today; Dale was having some issues getting comfortable with the bandage from the biopsy so they removed the bandages. They also explained that the biopsy results are not fully finished. Currently Dale is choosing at this time to forgo the  surgery to remove the tumor and any chemo treatments and he also signed a Do Not Resuscitate order. However; they are holding a surgery spot for him on Wednesday in case he decides to change his mind, they gave him till Tuesday to decide. Now the stuff no one likes talking about.  With heavy hearts we were given a timeline of life expectancy to be maybe a month if he chooses to do nothing. From the hospital he will go into hospice care. 

This last week has been a whirlwind. I will keep the website updated daily.