Sep 18, 2008

Okay, Not What I expected But...

So yesterday I had my appointment with the Oncologist at the Pencer Brain Tumour Centre in the Princess Margaret Hospital to talk about my radiation treatments. Dr. Millar is a very nice lady and very thorough. They did all of the usual tests and checked me out to see how I was progressing and then she went over my MRI from September 5th again. Yes the stubborn little bugger the cyst has grown back and yes they are going to have to deal with it. Here is where it gets interesting.Dr. Millar asked what my Neurologist Dr. Bernstein had recommended as a course of action for dealing with the cyst. I told her that since he sent me right to her I had assumed that he planned on dealing with it through radiation. Now does everyone remember what happens when we ASS-U-ME? That’s right; I made an ass out of everyone but me.It seems that Dr. Millar was a little confused by this course of action since radiation generally has little effect on cysts. It’s too bad that the tumours themselves hadn’t grown back because those they can deal with. Dr. Millar informed me that she will contact Dr. Bernstein to go over the case with him and find out why he doesn’t want to operate again. I of course have my own theory about this. Have you ever tried to crack a nut twice? Things don’t generally go so well. Besides it really sucks. My vote was for trying the radiation.If in fact radiation is the way they decide to go, I will be setting up appointments next week to go down to PMH every day for 6 – 8 weeks Monday to Friday to get zapped. The thing about these treatments is that they may have no effect on shrinking the cysts and if they do, it could take up to 2 years for this to happen. Another bonus side effect is that because they are hitting the bean with these rays, it may in fact cause malignant tumours to grow in the future (Yeah!).In the mean time they have given me steroids to take on a daily basis to stop the swelling in my brain and to increase my beach muscle. I’m thinking of starting by ripping telephone books in half everyday for the next few weeks and then moving on to benching hybrid cars. I’ll be the guy at the beach with the huge upper body and the toothpick legs.