Visit with the Brain Doc

Yesterday Barb and I met with my neurosurgeon who confirmed pretty much everything we learned on Friday from the radiologist's report on my brain MRI.

The one tumor in the brain treated just over six-weeks ago has disappeared completely. There are, however, three new small tumors in the brain. All are very small, one is two millimeters in size and two are one millimeter in size.

The neurosurgeon is going to try to get me in for my third round of Gamma Knife radiation treatments next week.

Whew. This will be the fourth round of radiation blasts to my head - whole brain radiation once, and three Gamma Knife radiation treatments.

Though I thought I've been feelings symptoms of brain swelling, the neurosurgeon did not think that there was much evidence of brain swelling on my scans. He recommended staying on the steroid for now as I enter into the Gamma Knife procedure. But he also recommended getting off the steroid afterwords as quickly as possible.

It's a strong steroid and the body builds up a dependence upon it. Pulling off the steroid will mean a weaning off of it, followed by a couple days of feeling miserable when I finally come off of it in full.

So what would explain my occasional lack of balance and foggy feelings in the head? Well the doctor thought it could just be the stiff right upper cut that radiation throws at a person. Radiation is silent and invisible, but it wallops quite a punch.

I asked about permanent damage to the brain, and he said that is always possible too. Although, he added, we've caught everything so far while it has been at a very small size.

The one thing that did surprise me was that he said that whole brain radiation was a possibility a second time. I had been told previously that whole brain radiation was a once and done deal because of the potential of serious damage to the brain. When I mentioned that to him, he pulled back from the idea of doing the whole brain, but he still held on to the idea in general.

I'm sure there are those who would argue that I was brain damaged before any of this started. LOL

It's back to painting again today. The more active I stay the better I feel and the less I think about the cancer. Plus we want to have central air installed this Spring and I have to get my painting mess cleaned up before the a/c guys come in and create their own mess.

But first it's off to exercise and hit the shower.