In The Beginning

My name is Sue Linhares and I live in Mattapoisett, MA. I have been married for 17 years to my husband Frank. We have no children but raise & show Gordon Setters and Betta Splendens.
A few months ago I started having vision problems in my right eye. Thinking I needed reading glasses I scheduled an appt with the Ophthalmologist. After several exams, an abnormal vision field test, and a visit to a retinal specialist the doctors scheduled me for an MRI of the globes and orbits, paying attention to the right optic nerve. Before the MRI I was told it would be about 6 pictures and the off chance of them having to use contrast dye. After 10 pictures they told me they were going to give me the contrast dye and I started to get nervous that they had found something. At 8:30am the next morning I got a call from my ophthalmologist saying that they had found a mass on my LEFT orbit. My right orbit and everything else looked good. He gave me the number of a very respected orbital specialist at Mass Eye and Ear, Dr Arthur Grove, and told me to call him NOW. I hung up the phone not knowing what to do. I was numb. On one hand I was terrified but on the other I was thankful that we "accidently" found this, even if we still didn't know what is going on with the sight in my right eye. I called Dr Grove and was able to get an appointment the next day he was in the office for patients, only about 4 days away. This was all moving so fast and all I knew was that the first doctor had said "it isn't huge, but not tiny" when I asked him how big it is. I was really put at ease by both Dr Grove and his wife, who works as his office manager. I have found out that Dr Grove has written several books on orbital tumors and won awards for his work with both the orbit and reconstrucion surgery. He did a thorough exam and then we looked at the MRIs together. It was kind of surreal to see a photo of your brain and also a white spot the size of a nickel along the superior lateral orbital wall. The doctor was surprised that I wasn't presenting any symptoms in my left eye other then a decrease of vision from 20/20 to about 20/30, tearing out of the outside corner of my left eye and slight headaches that I had all written off to eye strain. He wanted to do a CT and personally called the radiology dept, which told him to send me right over. After the CT they told me that the Dr would get back to me in 2 days. He called me the next morning after a meeting with the chief radiologist, a neurosurgeon, oncologist and another Dr that I can't remember. He told me they agreed with the following and they determined: First it is definitely a tumor. Second it has fairly well circumscribed edges so they do not believe it to be malignant. Third the CT showed that it is actually the size of my eye, or about a quarter. Fourth was that at this time it doesn't seem to have caused any damage, it is not around the optic nerve, and also while it seems to be right against the bone it doesn't look like it has gone into the bone or into the brain cavity. After just the MRI they had mentioned meningioma or cavernous hemangioma and now that they have read the CT scan I was told that there is still a chance it is one of these two diagnosis but it could also be a schwannoma or one of about 30 other tumors that they didn't tell me the names of. I had an MRI of the brain 4 years ago for something unrelated to this, and the tumor wasn't there at that time.
I have started this site as a way to both let family and friends keep up with what is going on and also to keep a log of the progress for myself