Remember When I Said Third Time’s A Charm?

Well I must be extra lucky because now I’m going in for surgery number 7! That means 2 charms and once more for luck! Looks like everything is finally going my way. How did I get so lucky you ask? Well I just spent another fabulous four night stay at my favourite hospital after waking up on Friday morning with a severe headache (huh, that’s new) and feeling so sick that I couldn’t keep anything down – even water. Luckily I was staying at my parent’s place for the night because Amy and the kids had to go to St. Thomas for the weekend and it seems that I now need a babysitter in case of this like this. Well, they carried me to the car, laid me in the back seat and my Dad once again set the car on autopilot and we headed to Toronto Western. So once more I was ushered in and looked after by my friends where I was drained. This time however, instead of sending me on my merry way, I was told I would be staying. “Great” I thought, “Now maybe they’ll start the injection treatments that they’ve been promising me for months.” Yes the interferon injection treatments that they told me I’d be starting a few months ago. You know, I’ve been wondering why they’ve been dragging their feet with this. If it’s going to make me feel better then why not get on with it? Well the answer came down that they were not going ahead with the injections after all. I was very disappointed and demanded to know why. “It’s never been done before.” No one’s ever gotten injections? “Not in the brain.” I don’t care let’s just go. “The risk of side effects are just too great” came the reply. Come on though, how bad could they really be? Well here’s the list they gave me:

-Flu-like symptoms following each injection (fever, chills, headache, muscle aches and pains, malaise)

-Tissue damage at the site of injection

-Depression and suicide have been reported among patients receiving interferon

-Other side effects that may occur are fatigue, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, joint aches, back pain and dizziness.

-Still other possible side effects are anorexia, congestion, increased heart rate, confusion, low white blood cell count, low platelet count, low red blood cell count, an increase in liver enzymes, an increase in triglycerides, temporary skin rashes, mild hair loss or hair thinning, swelling edema, cough or difficulty breathing.

You know, upon further reflection, I now tend to agree with the decision of the doctors. Besides, who wants diarrhea? So now what? Hang in there? There is one more option – another brain surgery. Not to remove the cyst but to redirect to drain from going into the reservoir in my head to a tube in my stomach. This way the cyst can drain all it wants and it will never need to be aspirated. After spending every other weekend in emergency with needles sticking out of my skull this sounded great. And all they have to do is open up my skull and run a tube down my spine into my stomach. I know it almost sounds too good to be true but this is what we’re doing. I’ve already signed all of the permission papers and done the pre-op work and now I’m just waiting for a table for one in the O.R., which I’m supposed to hear about by the end of the week.

You know what? I’m really looking forward to this one. I have very high hopes for this and I think this is the one that will make me feel a lot better. Here’s hoping anyway.