Falls Church, Virginia / Shirlington, Virginia / Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia / Annandale, Virginia / Tyson's Corner, Virginia
In my 1/5/05 journal entry, I was able to write about a lot of the things I learned form the meeting with Dr. Patrick Kelly. However, I ran out of space in that journal entry before I could lay out all that I learned. I want to use this journal entry to complete those thoughts. So, in no order:
More of What I Learned
- There are six types of gliomas. An astrocytoma is one of those six (I have a low-grade astrocytoma).
- Dr. Kelly is unable to say how long I have had this brain tumor, but if he had to guess, he would say that I have had it for five or ten years.
- In item 7 of my 1/5/05 journal entry, I mention the fact that Dr. Kelly has performed surgery on 40 people with what I have. Some more information in this regard:
- All of these 40 people had astrocytomas in the same part of the brain as me. He has experience.
- Of the 7/40 that were worse off after the operation, some had tumors with a different consistency to them. Dr. Kelly said that instead of being the consistency of butter or Jell-O (my words), some had tumors with the consistency of leather. Dr. Kelly had to work hard to remove this tissue. Now he knows not to touch patients any further if he finds this consistency.
- My tumor is NOT in a cognitive part of the brain.
- Dr. Kelly has never had someone die on the table during surgery (out of 6,500 surgeries).
- In addition to reducing the probability of malignant transformation, another important outcome of the surgery would be that the tissue sample size would be significantly increased from that from my 12/10/04 brain biopsy. In the biopsy, only four samples were taken. This is not enough to really determine what this tumor is. By having a huge sample size, there will be more certainty. This will lead to better analysis and determination of long-term treatment, therefore reducing guesswork.
This information is starting to point in certain directions.
