Recovering Well

It has been exactly a week since the brain surgery and I'm finally getting my legs back. My head hurt a bit but surprisingly not too bad. Since I was on veggie juices and salads in the hospital, my body was detoxing as well as getting over the surgery which was hard. So when I came home, I added some soup and buckwheat bread to the diet and it really perked me up. The compression of the surgery also gave me a bit of black left eye but that has cleared up pretty well today. So I've just been laying low and reading a lot about diet and forming a game plan for the months to come.

On Monday, I saw a naturopathic oncologist to get some feedback on my diet and see what information I could get on alternative treatments and supplements. It was an hour long visit and all in all, he told me to keep doing what I'm doing because it's the best thing for me. In his words, "Don't be scared of juicing." I'm not going to go completely raw food and have some cooked food as well but it is important for me to stay alkaline to kill the cancer. Raw vegetables holds the most oxygen and cancer cannot live in that environment. Even though I had already cut a lot of sugars, carbs, and processed foods, it was obviously not enough to keep the cancer away so it's even more important to be as strict as possible with what I eat.

Today I had my stitches removed and also saw my radiation oncologist. I'm eligible to join a study group where I will be monitored more after treatments and will get a MRI every 3 months. The treatment will be the same except the study wants to do the treatments simultaneously. The treatments will be ten whole brain radiation treatments and one stereotactic radiosurgery. They need to radiate the whole brain because there is very likely more cancer cells that are present but cannot be seen on the MRI. Surgery itself makes cancer cells move and most brain mets grow in multiples so there's a high chance of more tumours developing. The stereotactic radiosurgery is a high dose of radiation aimed right at the existing tumour with precision. It's the best way to get rid of the tumour when surgery isn't an option. The doc thinks it's 90% chance it will work. I think it's the recurrence of tumours that's more of a problem to prevent than taking out the ones I have. In any case, this promising news and should not be painful but again in the short term will slightly affect my memory and overall brain function. All the radiation treatments will take only two weeks.

Many people have asked me how come the scan never picked up my mets. My last PET scan was in April which I paid for and that scan doesn't scan the brain. When the radiation and surgery was over, I was scheduled for another CT scan by the agency but I passed on it because I didn't want any more additional radiation since it was only two months later. I probably had these mets right after the reconstructive surgery because like I said, surgery makes cancer move. I don't think anyone could have guessed it would come back so soon so there's no use in looking back. I don't even know my full diagnosis yet because I will see my oncologist on Friday where she can explain it all and tell me about treatment protocols for the rest of my body. Whatever the case is, I'm no longer scared because my will to fight this won't change and I'm determined to give it my all.

Love, J