Gliadel Wafers
It’s been 1 week since my surgery and I’m scheduled tomorrow to get the staples removed from the surgical procedure used to get inside my head. The last time I had surgery it was sutures, but this time it was all metal. I’m trying to imagine what it must feel like to be the person responsible for going down a 6-inch insision on someone’s head and line it with staples.
I wonder what they’ll use to take them out?? At any rate before I go into more detail or report on that, I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve already started my chemotherapy treatment. It actually began on the day of surgery. Before they closed up my wound, the neurosurgeons performed tests on the tumor tissue to see if it was a candidate for Gliadel Wafer treatment. What Giladel is, is that it is a wafer about the size of a dime. I had read about them 5 years ago right after my last surgery and apparently it’s on the Barrow list of approved treatments.
Gliadel Wafers are biodegradeable and are inserted and placed within the cavity inside my head where the tumor resection was performed. They dissolve over time, but as they do, they deliver localized chemo treatments directly to potentially harmful tumor tissue.
This website explains it a lot better:
www.gliadel.com/hcp/about/moa_video.aspx
I’m going to be doing a post on my staple removal experience tomorrow after the appointment, so stay tuned 
February 13th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
[...] given the fact that I’ve already been given a form of chemo with those special gliadel wafers I mentioned earlier in the doctor’s opinion is another reason to scratch my name off the chemo-list [...]