Monday 30 November 2009
Friday 20 November 2009
Surgery
It's been while now since I updated here.
Two weeks ago we went to Johannesburg and spent three days there for Helen to have scans. She had a PET/CT-scan and an MRI-scan at Linksfield hospital.
It took a week before we got the interpreted result by our doctor in Durban, and as has been the case with almost every of Helens scans, the result was good but left many questions unanswered.
They have established that there are two areas with tumour activity, one 4 mm tumour almost at the centre of the brain (which was much larger in the first scan six months ago), and one more diffuse area in the periphery of the brain.
Over the last two months Helens has been getting more and more symptoms:
-numbness in the left side of the face, nose, tongue and inside of mouth
-tiredness
-dizzyness
-loss of balance
-headaches
-weightloss
The doctors couldn't find anything in the scans that could explain any of these symptoms, no swellings or buildup of pressures were visible.
Last Thursday Helen was anyway given steroids, which are supposed to reduce swelling. After five days her symptoms continued to get worse, so the dose was doubled and from then the situation at least is more stable.
Right now the plan is like this:
-We will meet the neuro-surgeon on Tuesday, on Wednesday we are going to cape Town for five days for Helens cousin Ambers wedding, and probably on Tuesday 1st December she will have brain surgery.
They will not try to do anything about the central tumour, that would be to great a risk. What they will do is inspect the area at the periphery of the brain, and try to see if it is obvious where that tumour is, and if it is non-complicated try to remove it. This operation should not be too risky.
-Then after Christmas Helen will have radiation treatment to both these areas, this will be a 10-minute procedure every weekday for 6 weeks until mid-February.
-After all of this hopefully Helen will be scanned and have no more tumours and no more symptoms :)
Two weeks ago we went to Johannesburg and spent three days there for Helen to have scans. She had a PET/CT-scan and an MRI-scan at Linksfield hospital.
It took a week before we got the interpreted result by our doctor in Durban, and as has been the case with almost every of Helens scans, the result was good but left many questions unanswered.
They have established that there are two areas with tumour activity, one 4 mm tumour almost at the centre of the brain (which was much larger in the first scan six months ago), and one more diffuse area in the periphery of the brain.
Over the last two months Helens has been getting more and more symptoms:
-numbness in the left side of the face, nose, tongue and inside of mouth
-tiredness
-dizzyness
-loss of balance
-headaches
-weightloss
The doctors couldn't find anything in the scans that could explain any of these symptoms, no swellings or buildup of pressures were visible.
Last Thursday Helen was anyway given steroids, which are supposed to reduce swelling. After five days her symptoms continued to get worse, so the dose was doubled and from then the situation at least is more stable.
Right now the plan is like this:
-We will meet the neuro-surgeon on Tuesday, on Wednesday we are going to cape Town for five days for Helens cousin Ambers wedding, and probably on Tuesday 1st December she will have brain surgery.
They will not try to do anything about the central tumour, that would be to great a risk. What they will do is inspect the area at the periphery of the brain, and try to see if it is obvious where that tumour is, and if it is non-complicated try to remove it. This operation should not be too risky.
-Then after Christmas Helen will have radiation treatment to both these areas, this will be a 10-minute procedure every weekday for 6 weeks until mid-February.
-After all of this hopefully Helen will be scanned and have no more tumours and no more symptoms :)
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