First Meeting with Surgical Oncologist

The surgical oncologist we met with today is named Dr. Kevin Brumund and he looks a lot like the singer Jackson Brown. We were 30 minutes late to the appointment due to traffic and I was taken right in to the exam room. I nice fellow named Reggie took my vitals and then the doctor came in. He's grown a short beard but he still doesn't look a day over 40 (which Nancy noted by asking "How long have you been doing this?") What Dr. Brumund may lack in age though he mades up for in confidence and a business-like demeanor. (He answered Nancy, "A long time" - he likely has heard that question a few time before.)

Dr. Brumund took my history, looked at my records, felt my bumps and heard our request for an immediate excision the same day before stating that he would not be digging anything out of me until he could take a close look at my original MRI. He said that there's a "lot of expensive real estate" between my skin & the lymph node in my shoulder/neck area (like the brachial plexus nerve). He said he could theoretically do the biopsy surgery next Tuesday so long as the original MRI films (which we didn't have with us) indicated that was the most prudent course of action.

Since the original MRI films were still at the facility where I had the MRI done, I committed to going and getting them for him the same day so that the procedure could be confirmed - which I did.

So now the lymph node biopsy is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday April 29th. We asked the doctor's case manager, Susan Margolis R.N., if we could have the bone marrow biopsy done at the same time. Susan suggested that since two separate teams do the two different biopsy procedures, the odds of having both done at the same time were not good but she'd submit the request.



So anyway, Dr. Brumund knows what he wants to do and knows what he doesn't want to do with my lymph node biopsy - which soots me just fine. While he looks like Jackson Brown he's certainly no "Pretender".