Ben's Brain Tumour Blog

Sorry its been such a long time since my last post. with starting work and everything else i haven't had much time and not a lot to talk about. I've been enjoying work quite a lot and everyone who works there is great but it's come with a lot of added stress to my life. and i've been upsetting people more often than i used to. i say things now without thinking them through first and have lost a lot of the social skills i used to have. things don't come easy any more and i'm quite paranoid and insecure about my ability to interact with people normally now. people, who've known me for a long time and knew me before the tumour can understand a bit more because they know i didnt used to be like this, but for all the new people i meet at work, this is the only me they know and its quite worrying. i don't really like myself any more. i just hope it doesnt get any worse and its just a phase caused by all the changes and stress in my life. i'm paranoid becau...

So it's been a while due to university finals and my dissertation etc. But i can finally say, i passed all my exams and got a 2:1 degree and will soon have a licence to practice as radiographer. I managed to get the job i wanted in royal glamorgan hospital and i am in the process of renting an apartment in a converted chapel in llantrisant. there is lots of paperwork and stuff to go through for both the job and the apartment so i'm not sure when i'll start work yet. I had a scan in cornwall this month, and the results suggested changes in the white matter of the brain but not tumour growth. the scans have been sent up to specialists in London to have a look at and maybe establish a better idea of what is going on. I've been really stressed lately because of exams and life in general really and symptoms have been very present frequently. I went on holiday recently to northern italy for a family wedding which was really nice and i got to strike off visiting venice fr...

Hey guys, I was supposed to have a scan on the 21st but the MRI department had a power cut so it didn't happen. we got off the train at bristol and are aiming to rearrange the scan for after exams. I've also got a job interview after exams too. so busy times ahead. everything is going okay, i built myself up for the stress of a scan and to not have it was extremely disappointing because i've got to do that all over again now. I had my 25th birthday since my last post, which was nice! a study came out recently linking glioma growth to brain usage, which worried me a bit as i am currently writing my dissertation and studying for exams. i suppose with the location that my tumour is in it would be physical activity that pumps blood to my tumour. anyway, using your brain killing you faster is a depressing thought for sure. Hope you are all well :) Go Karting:) http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/04/23/401723235/thoughts-can-fuel-some-deadly-brain-cancers?utm_source=...

hello all, time for a new blog I think. I've only got two months left of what will be five years at cardiff university, which is extremely sad because i love it here. I've had some coursework deadlines and the last of my clinical placements in the past two months. Not sure how the the coursework went as we won't be getting results for a little while yet but my last clinical block was great. The staff and my clinical lecturer were awesome and got me to where i needed to be in time for my clinical assessments in which i got firsts. So things have been going surprisingly well so far considering how worried i was about returning to uni. The only downside to Carmarthen was the hospital accommodation which was a bit grim, but my coursemate made it easily survivable and i spent most weekends in swansea with Rene and her family so time went by really fast. As for future work I've got my research dissertation deadline and exams coming up in May. I've always enjoyed giving ...

I came by this study by mistake, i certainly haven't been looking for more evidence of a shorter survival for me. it just appears every now and then when i'm online. i was actually studying mTOR pathways at the time. i should be studying for my clinical assessment this month but i've been having really bad headaches so i got drawn back into the whole cancer world again unfortunately. i wanted to be a statistical outlier but my genetics suggest that if i'm going to be an outlier then it would be at the wrong end of the graph. ''Correlation between molecular markers was determined using the mann-whitney U and spearman rank correlation tests. eight of the 26 patients with methylated PTEN died during the study as compared to the 1 of 19 without methylation. There was a trend towards statistical significance with PTEN methylated patients have decreased survival (P=0.128)'' http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19705067 basically PTEN suppresses the mTOR pat...

Catch Up After Norway I had a very indulgent Christmas with lots of family. Which was amazing but I let my diet slip quite massively. I remained vegan but ignored protein and calorie restriction. This theme held up for probably 7 weeks into the new year and I ended up putting on over half a stone. Which isn’t the direction I’m supposed to be heading in at all. I usually find when I’ve lost all motivation it’s because I haven’t read the research in a while and my focus turns onto my everyday life and not what I’m eating when really I need to be able to do both. Anyway I delved back into all the research and I’m leaning towards low methionine diets still. Through this I discovered cronometer which I will explain later. Family Gathering I'm back at university again, mostly coursework at the moment until February when i go back to clinical for my final clinical assessment. And people have started to get jobs already so I need to start applying soon which involves making a co...