The good news and the bad news...

First, as they say, the good news. I had another MRI scan last week (7th Feb) and the neurosurgeon told me that the tumour hadn't grown any more. Even better, he said that he felt that I would only need to see him every six months, rather than every three like I have been doing at the moment. I'll be seeing the neurologist on Wed (13th - nice) just to check things with him, but all sounds positive along those lines.

Now the bad news. It appears that I may have a melanoma on my chest. To begin with I thought it was just a rash of some sort because I kept scratching an itch, but it turns out to be something else. I saw the doctor today who has requested a fairly urgent appointment with the hospital for a biopsy or whatever. Apparently it's a bit large, looks a bit like a mole and shouldn't appear on somebody my age. Deep joy. Apparently I'll be getting examined some time in the next month...

I've started thinking - 11/08/07

As I put in a previous post, the Internet - or indeed books - may not be your best friends. I did a bit more research and found that there are roughly 4 types of glioma. I won't bother listing them here, but none of them makes pleasant reading. So much so that I've now written to my neurologist asking a question that for some reason didn't occur to me before:

Is my life expectancy affected significantly by the presence of this glioma? Read the research and I'll be lucky to last more than 10 years. However, as I've said before, my glioma is low-grade and so these figures may not be relevant. On the other hand, some of the articles I've read do refer to low-grade gliomas too, although it's not clear whether the life expectancy figures refer to those too.

Typically for me, the type of glioma I have is very rare and so there are few statistics to work from. So nobody really knows for sure. I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on the MRI scans...

Once again, however, I feel perfectly fine and positive about things.

Neurosurgeon appointment - 08/08/07

This was to get a second opinion with regards to my glioma and also to discuss the options of removing it. The Neurosurgeon was a very pleasant chap and easy to get on with. I brought a copy of the MRI scans on CD as he was not provided with a copy. He had a quick look and spotted the glioma (tumour) very quickly (although my neurologist no doubt had supplied him with some clues). It turns out that it is about 2cms long and is, in the field of neurosurgery, considered to be relatively small. It is also in the right temporal lobe, just touching the right hippocampus. This surgeon does use the "Gamma Knife" which is a highly accurate and non-invasive way of zapping cancerous cells. Unfortunately, it is not appropriate for gliomas.

So he explains that I have three options: (a) do nothing and keep monitoring it. This is probably most appropriate seeing as it's low-grade and therefore relatively benign at the moment, (b) go for radiation treatment, which apparently you can only have once in your life (that's the series of treatment, not one radiation zap), or, (c) have it excised by surgery.

I've gone for (a). Why? Well, at the moment, it's not doing anything and the Lamotrigine seems to be doing its trick as far as stopping me from having seizures go. Option (b) is not attractive, especially as it can lead to hair loss, vomiting and all sorts of other unpleasant side effects. Also, as I said, you can only have it done once, so I'd rather wait until it's really necessary. Option (c) is almost out of the question. Because my tumour is quite deep within my brain, and because it's so close to the hippocampus, my neurosurgeon is worried that surgery could affect surrounding regions which could lead to severe short-term memory loss or, even, loss of use of one or more limbs. So that's a big no-no. It's also rather close to my amygdala - and damage to that is something I don't want to think about.