Yesterday, I had a chat with Dr. Thornton at MPRI. I had been noticing some irritating symptoms last week. Numbness in my left leg from the top of the thigh all the way down my foot, in my left arm, and general crankiness (what, me?!) and a feeling of just not feeling right, like I'm getting the flu.
On Monday night, I had another one of those terrifying episodes where I thought I was going to suffocate in my sleep. Needless to say, I was not pleased and had a feeling I knew where this was headed. I also told him that I even had some numbing episodes on the left side of my back.
He then proceeded to totally geek out (he was so excited, bless his heart!) about the cortical homunculus. I add the Wikipedia link here because it is really cool. And now I'm totally geeked about it. It's basically a graphical depiction of the body within the brain. All my symptoms correspond pretty close to this picture, considering my tumor is on the top half of the brain. Check out the link - it's pretty cool! It also explains why I still haven't gotten sensation back on my left index finger.
ANYWAY, bottom line is that I'm experiencing some swelling in the brain. It's totally expected at this point in time during treatment. So, we've decided that I'm taking the next 4 DAYS off! Normally, I would be pretty bummed, but I know that I need this time off. I just never recovered after last weekend, and considering I slept 12 hours last night, having some time off sounds like pure bliss.
When I go back on Monday, Dr. T, along with Dr. Henderson, will have figured out the new fields. YES, this means that not only will I have had a break, my treatment area will be narrowed down for the last part of treatments. This should also make my brain happy. We're still gonna try to get 38 total treatments in, but it might take a little longer than expected. Which at this stage is just a-ok with me.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment