Surgery Update

Hiya, just for a quick post surgery update, this is Renee, Bens girlfriend.  Ben over all is doing really well and is ok so far thank God:)! The day before surgery Ben needed a contrast MRI which we weren't aware of but apparently it is routine in order to map out anatomy relating to the tumour. The operation happened yesterday morning (30/1/14) and took around 5 hours and was finished round 12 pm, we were then allowed to see him around half 6 where he was moved from recovery to the ward. He was awake and able to speak and was with it but was very very drowsy and in a lot of pain and was hooked up to oxygen,catheter, head drain, drip and some pulse monitor thing. His movement seems fairly the same but still had a left side weakness. He was given morphine which he does not react well with and had hot flushes, nausea and panic attacks, he was also given IV paracetamol which made the pain pretty manageable.He was given steroids intravenously during the op but hasn't had to have anymore so far which is amazing cause they were horrific for him.

Today Ben has seemed a lot more like himself and ate for the first time since the op and is doing really well over all:) The head drain came out which looked pretty painful but is head started to swell and got more painful as the day progressed, the nurse said his face will probably bruise in the next couple days because of it.  He got a visit from an OT and a physio which was really nice as he got out and walked round with them a bit which was very encouraging to see :)This morning the surgeons reg dropped in to see  how he was doing but didn't go much in to detail about the surgery just that it went well that they got it all out. This kinda confused me and still does cause I thought that gliomas were intertwined with the brain tissue, making it impossible to remove all of it.. I dunno if he meant all that they could see on the MRI or what but yeah thats good news of course but hopefully on Monday we'll get a fuller picture once we've discussed things with the surgeon and perhaps we'll be able to have a look at his pre and post op scan to see where we stand. Results of grading etc won't be till sometime next week which is sooo terrifying.

Thank you all for your support & prayers, I'm sure Ben will fill you in with a lot more once he feels up to it that I've probably forgotten! xxx

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1 year update chemo, radiotherapy, surgery.

Its been over a year since I last posted, sorry about that. in June to August 2018 , I had 60gy of radiotherapy to my brain (32 days of treatment) with concurrent temozolomide, lost my hair in the areas which were close to the radiotherapy beams, but hair grows elsewhere. this was nauseating, unpleasant and increased my seizure activity, however, it was tolerable and wouldn't hesitate to do it again if advised. since then, I've been on a cycle of higher dose chemo (380mg p/day x5 consecutive days) every month for the year till today. this was also fairly tolerable once I had found my own way of doing. you're recommended to take at night before bed. however, I rarely slept well doing this. so I changed to taking it on an empty stomach in the morning and fasting till lunchtime minimum. this allowed chemo weeks to be very tolerable (provided I had enough rest) so I didn't work during chemo weeks. the week following chemo tended to be the worst week each month, frequent ill...
Read more

high grade scan results

Image
i imagine this one will be short. I have some pictures to show this time. so i had my 3 month scan last week and saw my oncologist in london again. the long and short is things are continuing to grow and the enhancement has grown so its now high grade, but that's just a label, the growth rate was always uncomfortably high. Report: ''unfortunately there has been marked enlargement of the substantial right frontal/cingulate glioma with an increase in mass effect, and more prominenet contrast enhancement. Posteriorly the abnormality extends into the base of the parietal lobe on the right hand side as well as into the corpus collosum, and anteriorly/inferiorly reaches the right sided septal nuclei.'' you might remember i talked about the corpus collosum (the connecting bridge between the two halves of your brain) at the beginning of this blog, the fact that its taken 5 years to finally invade it despite the growth rate in other areas is surprising to me. but apparently...
Read more

Craniotomy number 2: 11 days post op

Image
Hi all, so my 2nd craniotomy was booked in for the 1st june. nearly 3 1/2 years after the first one. this time with the same surgical team and same set up regarding surgical technique with the IMRI again, so i don't need to re-explain the procedure. This time they would use a entry site in the brain to get to the different tumour sites. This meant using the same scalp wound as before, but extending the cranial opening both forwards and backwards to get more access to the tumour that is now wider dispersed. unfortunately i dont have access to my pre-op or intraoperative scans to demonstrate what they did. (not yet anyway). i had non contrast pre-op scans the night before and then a contrast scan the morning of which  i wasnt expecting, but i suppose it makes sense considering at this point it had been a whole 6 months since my last scan. A few things were different  this time. i'd been practicing fasting for health reasons for a couple months before this surgery. but i th...
Read more