Helen is improving steadily :)
Yesterday afternoon they moved her from the intensive care unit (ICU) back to the normal ward. She is still very swollen, but not in very much pain.
The surgeon has told Helen that she could be allowed to leave the hospital and come home already next Tuesday.
Later today we should be getting the laboratory-results of the analysis of the tissue that was removed in the operation.
And Helen asked me to send thanks to all of you who are following this and for all the well-wishes she has been receiving. *Hugs*
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
A long day
This morning I was at the hospital at 8, so I could talk a little bit more to Helen before the surgery. She had already gotten a mild sedative and was starting to get drowsy.
At 9.20 they rolled her away into the operating theatre.
The neuro surgeon had told us that if the surgery went without complications it would take 2 1/2 - 3 hours.
So I waited, with Helen's parents and her aunt Cooks, and it is such a difficult wait.
Lots of terrible worrying, a desire to have this over and done with, you don't want the operation to take much longer than anticipated, but you also don't want to see the surgeon come towards you much earlier than expected.
In the end the operation took only just over 2 hours, there was very little bleeding, and they managed to find the affected area easily. They got a sample of the central tumour, and the removed some of the surrounding swelling that were interfering with the nerve leading to the left side of Helen's face. In a few days we'll get the results of the testing of that tissue, and then we should maybe also start to see if some of the symptoms are reduced.
And then we'll see if they want to do any further surgery, or whether radiation will be the next step.
About an half hour after the operation ended they let us in to see Helen for a few moments. She was awake, but quite drowsy. They had to cut through her muscles in the back of the head which means lots of pain after the surgery, so they were giving her great amounts of pain killers.
Helen's mother took the below picture
After that we went home, and I had a great long nap, I haven't slept that well in a long time.
In about an hour we'll go back to the hospital and see her again :)
At 9.20 they rolled her away into the operating theatre.
The neuro surgeon had told us that if the surgery went without complications it would take 2 1/2 - 3 hours.
So I waited, with Helen's parents and her aunt Cooks, and it is such a difficult wait.
Lots of terrible worrying, a desire to have this over and done with, you don't want the operation to take much longer than anticipated, but you also don't want to see the surgeon come towards you much earlier than expected.
In the end the operation took only just over 2 hours, there was very little bleeding, and they managed to find the affected area easily. They got a sample of the central tumour, and the removed some of the surrounding swelling that were interfering with the nerve leading to the left side of Helen's face. In a few days we'll get the results of the testing of that tissue, and then we should maybe also start to see if some of the symptoms are reduced.
And then we'll see if they want to do any further surgery, or whether radiation will be the next step.
About an half hour after the operation ended they let us in to see Helen for a few moments. She was awake, but quite drowsy. They had to cut through her muscles in the back of the head which means lots of pain after the surgery, so they were giving her great amounts of pain killers.
Helen's mother took the below picture
After that we went home, and I had a great long nap, I haven't slept that well in a long time.In about an hour we'll go back to the hospital and see her again :)
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 :)
Friday, 18 September 2009
Update on Helen's cancer
First I must thank all of you who have written encouraging messages.
I will write replies to all of you, very soon.
After Carl died me and Helen went to Ficksburg to see Helens parents for a week, and then we came back here to Durban. It took us just a few minutes to gather up all baby-related things and put in the nursery and then we closed the door.
Since then we have enjoyed having just ourselves to care for, building up a routine. I am working as usual for getmein.com and Helen is mostly resting.
We have of course a lot of thoughts about what happened, and I will write more about those later.
Last week Helen had a brain and spine MRI, and we have now seen both the neuro-surgeon and the oncologist.
The results of Helen's scan were mainly good. The small tumour seems to be completely inactive (or maybe not a tumour at all), and the larger tumour has shrunk a little bit since the last scan two months ago. But the tumour is situated in a location in the brain which makes it difficult to operate on Helen without great risk of causing other problems. So the surgeon does not want to operate unless the situation gets more critical.
Another problem is that the tumour is not displaying the precise characteristics of the type of cancer that Helen had seven years ago, so now the doctors are speculating that it might be another type of cancer (which could be both worse and better), but it makes the planning of the treatment more difficult. And they can't know for sure, unless they get a sample, but as said before, just getting that sample is associated with a great risk of damaging some part of the brain.
The doctor said this about Helens chances:
If there are 10 people in Helens position, then
-1 of them will die within a year
-at least 5 of them will die within 5 years
-only 1 of them will live longer than 10 years.
On the bright side, this is the same prognosis that they gave Helen seven years ago, except they said only one in ten would live longer than five years :)
The way the tumour would kill Helen would be if it stopped responding to treatments, and just continued to grow and the doctors were unable to stop it. So far this tumour has responded very well to chemo-therapy, so that is an encouraging sign.
So the treatment plan now is that on Monday Helen will start another round of chemo-therapy, and three weeks later she will have another round, and three weeks after that they will commence a five week radiation treatment, that will last until early December.
We had planned to go away on some holiday to get some distance, but now there will not be much time for that, plus the fact that the chemo-therapy will lower Helens immune system, and then perhaps travelling in these swine-flu times is not a good idea.
But it is still our plan to try and spend Christmas in Sweden.
I will write replies to all of you, very soon.
After Carl died me and Helen went to Ficksburg to see Helens parents for a week, and then we came back here to Durban. It took us just a few minutes to gather up all baby-related things and put in the nursery and then we closed the door.
Since then we have enjoyed having just ourselves to care for, building up a routine. I am working as usual for getmein.com and Helen is mostly resting.
We have of course a lot of thoughts about what happened, and I will write more about those later.
Last week Helen had a brain and spine MRI, and we have now seen both the neuro-surgeon and the oncologist.
The results of Helen's scan were mainly good. The small tumour seems to be completely inactive (or maybe not a tumour at all), and the larger tumour has shrunk a little bit since the last scan two months ago. But the tumour is situated in a location in the brain which makes it difficult to operate on Helen without great risk of causing other problems. So the surgeon does not want to operate unless the situation gets more critical.
Another problem is that the tumour is not displaying the precise characteristics of the type of cancer that Helen had seven years ago, so now the doctors are speculating that it might be another type of cancer (which could be both worse and better), but it makes the planning of the treatment more difficult. And they can't know for sure, unless they get a sample, but as said before, just getting that sample is associated with a great risk of damaging some part of the brain.
The doctor said this about Helens chances:
If there are 10 people in Helens position, then
-1 of them will die within a year
-at least 5 of them will die within 5 years
-only 1 of them will live longer than 10 years.
On the bright side, this is the same prognosis that they gave Helen seven years ago, except they said only one in ten would live longer than five years :)
The way the tumour would kill Helen would be if it stopped responding to treatments, and just continued to grow and the doctors were unable to stop it. So far this tumour has responded very well to chemo-therapy, so that is an encouraging sign.
So the treatment plan now is that on Monday Helen will start another round of chemo-therapy, and three weeks later she will have another round, and three weeks after that they will commence a five week radiation treatment, that will last until early December.
We had planned to go away on some holiday to get some distance, but now there will not be much time for that, plus the fact that the chemo-therapy will lower Helens immune system, and then perhaps travelling in these swine-flu times is not a good idea.
But it is still our plan to try and spend Christmas in Sweden.
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