Dr. T

I was introduced to Dr. Thompson, the radiologist. He was quite serious, very direct and to-the-point. His thick salt and pepper hair showed his age. But after a minute or two he warmed up. Turns out the man can talk about seemingly any topic, and over the course of my treatment we did. Primarily food, wine and restaurants, but we also discussed Italy, firearms, skiing and the philosophy of Ted Nugent in detail. He’s a well-rounded guy.


He’s also extremely passionate about what he does. He’d seen my MRIs and had begun digging through the medical journals to see what the current school of thought was in regard to the treatment of tumors like mine. Since they were so rare, there wasn’t much.

Initially, both he and Dr. Greene were leaning toward a one-time radiation treatment. Medicine has advanced to the point where they can target radiation to a fraction of a centimeter. They would do this with a single, high blast of radiation right at the tumor. In order to avoid zapping a slice of my brain, they’d hit it from multiple angles with something called a Gamma Knife (anyone need a band name?) that, when all the beams met, would burn whatever area they were focused on.

Though I had only a few office visits with Dr. Thompson at this point, he called frequently to keep us updated on his findings and thoughts regarding the tumor. He’s one of those guys where once you’re in, you’re in, so he’d frequently get so excited that he’d revert to medical-ese to describe aspects of the tumor and differing methods of treatment. I, as listener, was just along for the ride on his rocketing train of thought. It was charming and endearing.

I could understand the appeal for him. He didn’t run into tumors like mine every day. This was a challenge.