5 Weeks Later

Well, it's been a little over 5 weeks since I had my surgery.  Quite a bit has happened in that time, most of it involving me sleeping and taking meds.  The first 2 weeks were somewhat rough, I did a ton of sleeping the first few days after I got home from the hospital.  During that time, the fluid that was being drained off while in the hospital decided to build up under my right eye.  A few days of attempting to sleep more upright and applying some ice fixed that right up.  Can't say it was very comfortable trying to sleep that way but you gotta do what you gotta do.  I dealt with some headaches for several weeks after surgery but those have generally gone away at this point.  The staples came out a couple weeks after surgery which was surprisingly painless.  Those staples get annoying and itchy after a while.  To this point I'm still dealing with quite a bit of fatigue.  Going to dinner or hanging out with friends tends to drain me after a few hours but otherwise I'm doing well.

Next Steps

We had a meeting with a neuro-oncologist - Dr. Robert Albright - who is a super-specialist in tumors that start in the brain.  He had the results of the biopsy and it turns out I have a grade II optic glioma also called an astrocytoma with pilocytic features.  Basically, it's a non-cancerous tumor growing off of my optic nerve.  The grade II part means that is has "fingers" that are growing along my optic nerve which makes 100% removal via surgery impossible (unless you want to go blind).  The doctor went over several options but ultimately he highly recommended radiation and chemotherapy to stop the tumor from growing (and possibly shrink it) so that it doesn't cause any more vision loss.  The chemotherapy is an oral medication and will only be taken during the period of time that my radiation treatments happen.  Basically, it's not a super-intense treatment and is generally used to help the radiation do its job better.  Radiation will be 5 days a week for 6 weeks and that begins on April 20, 2015.  The doctors seem to think I won't have much trouble outside of fatigue.  There are some side effects and risks with the chemo but those seem to be very small - i.e. the risk shouldn't stop us from doing the chemo, apparently it's pretty effective.  It sounds like I'll be getting an MRI about every 3 months for the foreseeable future to monitor the tumor and make sure it stops growing.  The doctor said he fully expects to see me in his office with my future children looking at MRI's together....an uplifting piece of news.  All-in-all we've gotten just about the best news we could have expected considering the location and type of tumor I have.  By the way, if anyone knows someone who has a brain tumor I would highly recommend Dr. Albright.  He is extremely thorough and is clearly passionate about his work. 

I started back to work on 4/6/2015 and so far all is going well.  I'm pretty tired when bed time comes around but I can tell I'm getting a little more normal each day that goes by.  Again, I want to say thank you to everyone who has sent gifts, cards, and well wishes!


Here's my scar 5 weeks later

This is what you want your chemo medication to come in - very comforting