Today we went and saw Vishy Iyer, Amelia Hall, Max Shpak, and Matt Cowperthwaite who run a brain tumor bank at UT and St. David's. We're going to try to get them a sample of my tumor from the surgery and get it on liquid nitrogen immediately if we can. This is both to preserve it for my later needs and possibly for their future study.

They look for mutations in genes that are related to cancers, and they look at what's turned on and what's turned off in my genome. They do this using things like whole exome sequencing, whole genome sequencing, RNA sequencing, etc. It's really amazing, and I really only "understand" a few buzzwords. Still, I'm looking forward to the possibilities. Much of what I think my oncologist wants  to do based on our initial consult in the hospital last Monday includes genetic work that is the standard of care already, but when we're ready to get fancy with our CheezWhiz, they'll have my tumor in the bank on liquid nitrogen.

The real issue here is likely to be legal in the end. The hospitals are risk averse and getting them to allow Amelia to come to the OR and take part of me away is the hardest step. There will be lots of things to sign. They've done it at St. David's before, and she's nominally set up to do it at Seton, but it's never actually happened before. We talked to Kemper about it (he's in), and I've made the first mention of it to Seton, but we're going to probably push pretty hard on some levers of power to make sure it all comes together in the next couple of days.