Ben's Brain Tumour Blog

I felt bad leaving my blog on such a depressing note since my mood and outlook has been better for a good week now. Just like with diagnosis, it took a few days to accept the new prognosis, and then you get over it and move on with life. I’m fairly symptom free at the moment so its easy to forget you have any sort of life threatening disease which does wonders for my mood. I’ve had a few  headaches, but the anxiety I used to have is almost non-existent so it doesn’t worry me. I know the headaches are just the brain changing shape and not new growth. my nerves are knitting themselves back together on my scalp, and i get a feeling of running water down my face everytime this happens. Birthday I had my 24th birthday this week which was nice. Rene was down and I went out for a meal with family and friends and jack managed to get the chef to make me a vegan meal. So that was nice. I got a lot of vegan chocolate for my birthday. And I ate over half a kilo of it in the 3days foll...

Scan I was expecting nice clean lines and a cavity, maybe even no hole at all. All of the pot resection scans I’ve seen are removal of outlying tumours near or on the surface, they always seem to be very neat and tidy. Mine was nothing like that. Hopefully one day I can get a copy to show. It hasn’t been reported on yet so I don’t know the official verdict but it looked a mess to me. The cavity held different density fluids and there were some areas of uptake that were hopefully scar tissue rather than residual tumour. But I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They might not either. If it doesn’t grow it means its just scar tissue, if it does it’s tumour. I’ll have to update when I have an official report Genetics There are a couple important genetic factors to look for that affect prognosis. Positive for IDH1 – most Gliomas that are grade 2-3 contain this gene, it is beneficial to survival to have it as not having it people tend to be classed as pre-glioblastoma. H...