Pathology Report

Okay so today was going to be one of the defining days of this whole blog. Depending on the results from today would completely alter my treatment plan. If it was high grade it was going to be radio and chemotherapy. If it was low grade it would be a watch and wait with regular scans sort of action.

Anyway, so my diagnosis is an infiltrative diffuse oligoastrocytoma, which is more than I could hope for. Diffuse means its low grade or grade 2 instead of 3/4, which means a number of things such as slower growth rate and less aggressively invading surrounding healthy brain tissue but it still does hence 'infiltrative'. 12.4% of tumours are low grade. Less than one percent of all brain tumours are diffuse oligoastrocytomas



astrocytomas are the most common type of brain tumour and include glioblastomas which are the really scary ones.  However my tumour has another type of glial cell present in it called oligodendrocytes, which from my understanding are the cells that create myelin the sheaths for nerves. Now these change the characteristics of tumours into slightly less aggressive ones. So good news number one, I have a low grade glioma, secondly it’s a less aggressive form of low grade glioma. so no further treatments for me, just scans every 6 month to check for relapses.  The best news would have been a pure oligendroglioma. But that was wildest dream at this point. This bit of the diagnosis explains why some of my scans are enhanced, because oligodendrocytes have a high fat content which obviously the MRI is picking up.

I was then taken to have my staples out. Which was not that bad. Just felt like someone pulling hairs out. I would give the prognosis and survival times of this tumour but I won’t because I know a couple of other people with the same diagnosis as me who may touch upon this blog and it’s not my business to tell them. It’s not something everybody wants to know.


so anyway, very successful week in general, good surgery, good recovery, good diagnoses, good care, obviously it would have been best to not have had to happen. but things are looking up :)

post surgical scans are in 3 months, and post op clinic is in 3-4 weeks.

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