BehindTheMedspeak: 'Frank Must Die' - The Sequel

"Frank" is dead.

You may recall the story of David Dingman-Grover (above), a nine-year-old boy with a potentially fatal brain tumor he nicknamed "Frank."

His family had no insurance and could not afford the surgery he needed.

They put up an eBay auction, offering a bumper sticker saying "Frank Must Die" in return for the winning bid, which hopefully would be high enough to pay for the surgery.

Dr. Hrayr Shahinian, a plastic surgeon and member of the Skull Base Institute at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, heard of the boy's plight and offered to perform the surgery for free.

At 10 a.m. yesterday in Los Angeles, 9-year-old David Dingman-Grover was wheeled into the operating room.

Dr. Shahinian inserted a fiber-optic tube the width of a drinking straw into David's nose and up through the bony

cribriform plate

directly into the boy's brain.

Using this endoscopic approach, the surgeon then resected most of an embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, including the portion that was impinging on the boy's optic nerves and carotid arteries.

By a little after noon, David was awake and asking for his mom and Ben, his teddy bear.

He's being discharged home today.

"Frank Is Dead" - and may he never return.