Thanks for the encouragement, Paula and Eileen.

I had my esophagus dilated again yesterday--still very sore from it today. Maybe that will last em a while. I also found out that "bougie" means "pencil" in French (this must be a French vocab word I never had) and that the thoracic surgeon who has been dealing with the esophagus stuff does think that if I can learn to use one it would help keep my esophagus open--it is essentially the same thing they use for dilations (he also said "it's like learning sword swallowing"). He gave me info. about what size I would need so now I need to go back to my ENT here and see if he can order it and help me learn to use it (hopefully). I'll keep you all updated!

I also went to see the neurologist last week about the incidental MRI finding and he showed me this benign "growth"--the meningioma (he didn't use the word tumor I think because he didn't want to scare me). It's a sizable thing in there--as he put it the size of a very large olive or a very small plum (the human brain is about the size of a cantalope so that gives you some idea of how much space it takes up). He said if it was rapidly growing my brain would show signs of swelling--there are none. Which probably means this thing has been growing slowly for decades to reach that size, the brain has just been slowly folding around it to accomodate it, and it may never cause any symptoms and thus never have to be removed. I have another MRI in 4 months so we can see if it has grown at all in that time and that will give more info. about whether I need to plan on having brain surgery sometime in my future. I have come to agree with you Paula that finding this was a "good mistake", though it took me a while to get rational enough to reach that conclusion!

I am still waiting to hear about the results from the PET scan I had last week. Hoping for the best. And trying to swallow. Now I have to get into work before the snow hits!

Nelie