Treatment options

Holly and I went to see my neuro-oncologist to talk about treatment plans. He first showed us the before and after surgery MRI's. The region where the new tumours were growing is now gone. There are still parts of the old tumour remaining. This was not unexpected, but leads to some aggressive treatment. The doctor indicated that there is a clinical trail open for cases like mine, but had to get the details. The other option is PCV chemotherapy. Radiation therapy is not an option because I had  'lifetime dose' 6 years ago.  PCV was the standard treatment before Temodar - the chemo I was on for 19 months. Temodar was deemed just as effective as PCV with a lot less side effects. Taking Temodar now is not an option now because any remaining tumour is probably resistant to it.  PCV is administered for up to 6 months, and the doctor said most patients cannot physically tolerate it for that long and end up with less cycles.

I did ask about the 'do nothing wait-n-see' option. The doctor said that if I do nothing the remaining tumour will probably spawn another tumour in about a year. With PCV now it would be about 5-7 years.

There are a lot of open questions with the clinical trial, we will find out the details next week.

Another thing the doctors advised is that with the injury (from tumour and resection) to my brain that caused the problems on my left side that I need to do all my physical/occupational/speech therapy while completely rested. My brain needs to re-learn how to control my left side. This learning process is not a whole lot different from learning thing like math. You need to be alert and rested to learn something new. A tired brain will simply not absorb the new instructions.

The combination of the PCV and the rehabilitation rest means that I will probably not be going back to work for a while. This is tough to swallow. I enjoy what I do and the people I work with. There are serious financial and career implications to this. I take solace in the fact that the implications of not recovering would be much worse.  At this point I need to put my health first. Gulp.