Spiritual Slide Shows

I had a follow up visit with my neuro-oncologist today. She’s been the one assigned to my case since my first diagnosis and resection 5 years ago. I’ve been seeing her about every 3-4 months as needed as part of the original prognosis and treatment which was to be on observation and see what happened as a result of the first tumor resection. Being on observation was a fairly common treatment option at the time. I’ve been told that other forms of treatment such as radiation only get better with time and it’s better to do it only when it’s necessary so I don’t feel gipped in the least bit. However, since observation (as a treatment) has revealed a recurrence, the options have changed: One thing that is now for sure is that I’m going to be given radiation treatment. I’ve yet to figure out where this is exactly going to happen and when, so mentally I’ve been preparing myself for the outcome of that. What I do know about it is that it will supposedly make me very tired, lose patches of hair on my head, and maybe some life-style changes with my job (like having to go lie down before going back to work or going on a part-time schedule).

However there is good news: To our surprise, we’ve been told that chemo-therapy is NOT on the list of treatments for people in my category of diagnosis: Low grade oligodendroglioma in a male under the age of 40. Also 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 treatment for which we are all relieved.

This is good news in the fact that now the team at Barrow seems to be coming to a consensus as what my treatment is supposed to be post-resection. We had doctors coming and going after I was in the recovery and ICU 2 weeks ago explaining what their individual personal opinion was on what the next step would be, and it seemed like the story changed each time with each doctor. But these people are professionals and work as a team. So I wasn’t getting the group’s opinion which is more important. I wasn’t doubting that much but the pieces of the puzzles are slowly starting to fit into place. Now where can I find a website to explore how to wear my hair when patches of it are going to be missing?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under General, Serious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.