Change of Plan

We  travelled to London yesterday for chemotherapy but after a review with the consultant he recommended that we postpone chemotherapy for the moment and focus on radiotherapy.  The main issues at the moment are in my brain and spinal chord and this chemotherapy is not affecting these areas but radiotherapy is proving to be very effective.

When I had Ganna Knife treatment for the tumour in my ear canal, they also picked up several new microscopic tumours in my brain.  Because of the number of tumours appearing over the past few months, rather than wait for them to grow and treat them with Gamma Knife, the consultant suggested using whole brain radiotherapy, which treats all of the brain but with a much lower dose of radiation.  The idea behind this is to stop new tumours developing and growing.

I have an appointment with the Gamma Knife team next Tuesday but in the meanwhile, we have another appointment in London this evening to see the radiotherapy team there about whole brain radiotherapy  and also some potential additional radiotherapy to my spine. Some of my symptoms have got worse over the weekend so they will want to do some more scans to see if there is anything else showing up and plan treatment accordingly.

I haven.t been feeling very well the last few days, walking is very unbalanced, sleep is disturbed, pain at night and issues with my eyes amongst other things, but it's difficult to tell which of these are related to tumours on the spine and which are just side effects of radiotherapy. Effectively things can get worse for 3 to 4 weeks before they get better so I need to be patient and wait and see how the treatment works!!