Or anybody else that needs proof that I do, in fact, have a brain in my head. Albeit an interesting brain, but a brain nonetheless.
What follows is a series of MRI's that kindof demonstrate why I had the symptoms, then the lack of symptoms, then the recurrence of symptoms, and now on Avastin they're starting to get better.
This first image was taken on 6/9/08, which was prior to the second neurosurgery and radiosurgery. I believe I actually posted this previously. Remember that the white part is the veins/arteries surrounding the tumor. That's what feeds the tumor and the cystic part, and that's bad. The large gray part is the cystic part, which causes a large amount of pressure in my head. The cystic part was squashing the ventricles, causing what we call "mass effect," and of course my symptoms. We decided to do they radiosurgery to kill the tumor and the neurosurgery to drain the cyst. Afterwards, if you've been following the blog, I felt great after all that was done.
This was my next MRI a little less than two months later. My symptoms had returned and I was frustrated because the drain they put in didn't work anymore. As anybody can see... there was a huge growth outside in the vasculature (arteries and veins) on the tumor itself. The doctors didn't know whether that was a result of the tumor becoming more aggressive or an inflammatory reaction to the radiosurgery. They hit it with a high dose of radiation and that can cause an awful lot of inflammation and swelling. So, they didn't and I sure as heck didn't know. So they started avastin which promised to clamp down on that vasculature either way.
Here's my latest scan, on 8/26/08 after two treatments with Avastin. Clearly it looks better. The white part is smaller and less defined, the cystic part is smaller, and the ventricles are looking far better, meaning there's less mass effect and my symptoms are better.
Definitely good news.
As an aside, I've been going birding, picture taking, and geocaching with my time recently. I'll write a more light-hearted blog about that later. In the interim, here are some pictures of some red-tailed hawks in the park east of Loyola.
All the best,
m
