I have a brain ...

tumor. I started this blog to update family and friends about my journey through my battle to hell and back with esophageal cancer. So, now here we go again.

I had symptons of stumbling, vertigo, random numbness on the right side of body, vision problems, and short term memory loss. I stopped taking all narcotics in June, so things should have gotten better in these areas not worse. I went to my primary care physican, he sent me to my nuerologist. After an office evaluation, I was sent for and immediate MRI, even the brain scan from July was clean. When I got out of the MRI, she sent me back to my Dr.s office. He said that I had a brain tumor, that apprears, at this point, to be completely un related to all the madness that was in my body. They will not now if it is maligant or not until they do the surgery in 2-3 weeks. I can believe they are going to hack into my brain. Good news, the tumor in encapsulated and in a easy to remove location in the back of right cerebellum. I will have some pretty intense physical therapy to retrain the right side of brain to do some things. And I won't be able to drive for about a month after the surgery.

As of right now there is no Chemo on the schedule. I have to get a full body nuclear PET scan to determine whether there is any thing anywhere else. The cat scan in August was clean, so if anything is there it is small and early.

I am taking decadron (steroid) to control the swelling in my brain which makes me very hungrey and causes major insomnia.

So that's the basics for now, I will keep you all informed this weeks as things progress.Please pray for me!

Heather