Deja vu near me1/6/2024 He had ordered an MRI before my visit, and showed me and my husband the films on a computer. Three days after my meningioma diagnosis in the emergency department in 2015, I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon in Georgetown. ![]() I escaped with no major deficits and enjoyed 32 years of rarely even a stress headache. The radiation oncologist was surprised that my hair grew back, and I had come very close to losing my eyesight. Nevertheless, I had much to be thankful for. Wigs for children were not common then, and my parents had to buy one for an adult, which our hairdresser cut down to size. I remember lying in the bathtub, crying, as I pulled out my hair. Soon after, the short hair in the back of my head that had started growing back after the surgery, began to fall out in clumps. I felt a sense of relief when I realized the treatments had started and all I had to do was lie still. I remember lying on my stomach while the nurses drew on the back of my head, marking the area that would be radiated. I dreaded starting treatment, not just because I would lose my hair, but because I imagined something awful. I imagined a gas coming down from the machine as I laid underneath, having to breathe in the fumes. ![]() Radiation & My HairĪlthough I had a tour of the radiation oncology department before being released from the hospital, I had no idea what radiation treatments were. Despite knowing the risks of radiation, my parents opted for 5 weeks of radiation to reduce the chance of recurrence. After 2 surgeries and 2 weeks in the hospital, the surgeon thought he removed all of the tumor, but he told my parents it is possible that it might grow back. My diagnosis was a cerebellar astrocytoma grade II, which meant it was not benign, but a very slow-growing brain tumor. Nor did I know anyone else who had a childhood brain tumor. I didn’t ask adults what it meant, and for years I didn’t fully understand my diagnosis. I left the hospital not fully understanding what had happened, but one day I overheard adults talking about my brain tumor, so I looked up “brain tumor” in our medical reference dictionary, which sat next to our Britannica encyclopedia set. My parents took me to my appointment with a neurologist soon after, and I was admitted to the hospital for 2 surgeries-one to place a shunt for hydrocephalus (surgical insertion of a tube to remove excess fluid from the brain), and one to remove the brain tumor (on September 29, 1983). I don’t remember being scared of the CT scan, and I had no idea what it could reveal-I just remember not wanting to miss a day of school or be sick. CT scans were new in our rural Indiana area (where we lived), and the test was in a neighboring county. Brain Tumor #1Īt age 9, after several months of bad headaches, I had a CT scan in September 1983. So, I figured that it wouldn’t be as bad as my first tumor. And, because meningiomas were usually benign, doctors sometimes don’t do anything about them. Knowing how to spell meningioma somehow made me feel better. ![]() I had asked the doctor how to spell “meningioma,” then Googled it when I got to my car.Īs a communications specialist, I have always prided myself on being able to spell terms I knew very little about. He told me to schedule an appointment with my doctor, to arrange for a consult with a neurosurgeon.Ĭonsidering the wealth of information online, I planned to learn everything I could about this condition. He explained that it was a type of tumor growing from the lining of my brain (meninges), and this type of tumor was usually benign (meaning not cancer). “You have a meningioma,” the emergency department doctor told me after I had a CT scan. The urgent care doctor told me to go to the hospital emergency department across the street. Everyone came out of the closet, it seemed, with a headache story of their own, and none of them had a brain tumor. On September 22, 2015, I went to an urgent care facility because of nagging, dull headaches I’d had for a month, but didn’t think the headaches were bad enough to be serious. However, advances in technology, and the coming of the Internet age and social media, along with transitioning from a 9-year-old child to a mother of an almost 9-year-old child made the 2 experiences very different. During that period, I rarely had a headache, and had stopped the annual visits to my Indianapolis neurologist after graduating from college and moving several times, including my last move from Indiana to Maryland. The 32 years between the 2 tumors were quite uneventful. The first time I was a 9-year-old girl the second time was in 2015, when I was a 41-year-old mom. In fact, both tumors were serious enough to be scheduled for immediate surgery. ![]() I had a brain tumor removed-twice-on September 29.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |