Nathan met with a radiation oncologist at MD Anderson and he suggested doing radiation. It's a newer kind of radiation called proton therapy and it is supposed to do less damage to the parts of your brain surrounding the tumor. It is five and a half weeks straight and since we don't live in Houston we decided to hold off just a little bit. We are hoping to be able to move back to Houston and then start treatment.
We've done some research on proton therapy and it seems like the way to go if you have to do radiation. Regular radiation blasts all the way through the brain and goes out the other side, killing everything in it's path. That means it kills the good and bad parts of the brain. Proton therapy will still kill some good parts, but not nearly as much.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Brain Cancer Really Does Blow
When a neurologist finds a "smudge" on your husband's MRI of his brain and sends you to MD Anderson, you know something's up. I mean, first off, MD Anderson is a cancer hospital... a CANCER hospital! And then when the surgeons do an almost 12 hour surgery and are only able to get 85% of this so called "smudge" you start to worry a little about the 15% that is left. (They still call it a smudge at this point because they are waiting on the results from the biopsy.)
OK, now we have the results and we know it is stage 2 which if you have to get cancer that is the one to get. It's the lowest grade! So what do you do know? Well, I for one wanted to know the ribbon color for brain cancer. I'm sure most of us know pink is for breast cancer, but what represents brain cancer? It's weird the things you feel like you have to know when you're trying to deal with the news that your husband has cancer. So I found out it's grey. And then I found this beauty :
If you can't quite see it, it's a t-shirt that says, "Brain Cancer Blows" and there is a blow fish on it. I laughed so hard! And I gotta tell you, laughing feels so good after crying for so long.
I'd thought a lot about starting a blog dedicated to our journey with brain cancer. My sister in law started an MS blog after her husband was diagnosed with MS and I know the whole family loves getting on to see how he's doing. So here's our cancer blog and that is how I came up with the awesome name of Brain Cancer Blows. Because it does blow, but we are still able to find things to smile and laugh about and that is a good thing!
OK, now we have the results and we know it is stage 2 which if you have to get cancer that is the one to get. It's the lowest grade! So what do you do know? Well, I for one wanted to know the ribbon color for brain cancer. I'm sure most of us know pink is for breast cancer, but what represents brain cancer? It's weird the things you feel like you have to know when you're trying to deal with the news that your husband has cancer. So I found out it's grey. And then I found this beauty :
If you can't quite see it, it's a t-shirt that says, "Brain Cancer Blows" and there is a blow fish on it. I laughed so hard! And I gotta tell you, laughing feels so good after crying for so long.
I'd thought a lot about starting a blog dedicated to our journey with brain cancer. My sister in law started an MS blog after her husband was diagnosed with MS and I know the whole family loves getting on to see how he's doing. So here's our cancer blog and that is how I came up with the awesome name of Brain Cancer Blows. Because it does blow, but we are still able to find things to smile and laugh about and that is a good thing!
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