Diagnosis and Treatment

First, an announcement! I have decided to name my brain stem tumour Chad. Chad sounds like the kind of person I could beat up, and that's the exact energy I need right now. Shout out to Laura for the name!

I mentioned this on my front page, but I'll probably never get an official diagnosis in my entire life because they can't do a biopsy. As of writing, my team of doctors are 95% sure that it is, in fact, a Left Pontine Glioma, but they are not sure how bad it is.

I am optimistic that it isn't that bad, because one of the symptoms it's causing is toe numbness and, thinking back, I have experienced toe numbness for quite a while but never thought anything of it. Obviously, I'm not a doctor, and can't say this for certain but I'm trying to hold on to any hope I can find right now.

My treatment will start on April 29th at the latest. It will be 30 radiation sessions combined with chemotherapy. I get to wear this sick mask that holds my head in the exact same spot every time I get my radiation treatment so that they can make sure they aren't radiating things that don't need to be radiated. Next time I'll try to get a picture of me wearing this mask.

I kind of liked having the mask made, I'm not claustrophobic and the material is nice and fits my face. I think I'm going to have to start referring to my treatments as "spa days", and the hospital will be the spa. I think this mindset will make my treatment a lot more bearable.

I was surprised to hear that my oncologist doesn't think the chemo will make me super sick, and it's not supposed to cause hair loss! I had no idea how far these treatments had come. Maybe I can be the first chemo patient to ever make muscle gains during treatment.

On the 5% chance that it's not a brain stem tumour and it's MS or something else, they aren't concerned about exposing me to radiation for no reason. They say it shouldn't cause any lasting problems, it would just suck to get a treatment like that for no reason. Basically, I'm doing this treatment no matter what it is so wish me luck.

Hopefully, in 3 months, the radiation and chemo will have killed all the cancerous cells and they will be recycled out of my body through my cerebral spinal fluid, then I'll just have to get an MRI every two months for the rest of my life (which will be forever). The cool bonus to that is any other brain problems I could have will be detected so early! Also hopefully, my symptoms go away with the treatment. My most annoying symptom is diplopia or double vision. If none of my other symptoms go away, I hope the diplopia does.

Anyway, thanks for staying tuned to my updates! If I set this up right, and you "sign up" for my blog, you should get an email whenever I have a new post if you want to be the first to hear news!

If I didn't set it up right, hey, I'm the one with the brain tumour.