Partial Eclipse

Wednesday 23rd September 2015

Hi all, Dean (husband of Amanda) here.

Today, we've seen the consultant who has carried out both of Amanda's cranial surgery procedures over the past 4 months. Should I edit the word 'procedures'? Sounds a bit clinical. No I, think I'll leave it there for now.

It was good to see Ms Albanese (the consultant). She made a valid point that she doesn't get to see her patients after surgery as they're discharged from hospital so quickly these days, there's not normally an opportunity to see them post-surgery....unlike Amanda, as it's unfortunate we've had to repeat the operation.

Ms Albanese is happy that there cancer has been removed (again) from Amanda's brain. She described that a sample of the tumour had been sent away for analysis and nothing sinister or malevolent had come back in the results. The best way to describe it is the eclipse photo below. The dark area of the sun is the area that was sent away for pathological analysis, and results came back fine. What Ms Albanese wants to happen now is to send the rest of the sun away for further treatment. Therefore, what's now going to happen is that Amanda will undergo further treatment. 

What "further treatment" doesn't mean is that there's any form of cancer still inside her brain, but it does mean that she will undertake non-invasive treatment to target a dose of radiotherapy to the rest of the sun (see above paragraph). I've described this in a few posts over the past couple of months via its more commonly known name of Cyber Knife surgery. There's a very useful description of what this entails on this website here: http://www.thestanbowleytrust.org/cyberknife (the website in question, it turns out, was set up by friends and family of a former colleague within Staffordshire Police where I worked in Human Resources for a while 2007-2010.

So there will be no further cracking open of skulls, followed by 3 weeks of radiotherapy. Simply just two visits - one a discussion about the procedure, and secondly the procedure itself. Her's why it should be viewed as being a beneficial alternative to what Amanda has already gone through. http://www.thestanbowleytrust.org/benefits-cyberknife

So, what next?

• Ms Albanese is already in touch with the team at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham where this next stage will take place. 
• We need to allow 4 weeks until Amanda can undertake this next stage in order to recover from her most recent surgery. 
• We'll find out more w/c 28th September on when this may be.

Amanda has not been well the last 36 hours since coming off Dexamethasone (used to counteract the development of edema, which could eventually compress other brain structures) and it was a task in itself to get her to hospital today. She reacted emotionally to the news from Ms Albanese today, which hopefully will now assist in a prolonged period of recuperation. Also, what Amanda has to accept that the path to recover is a long one, akin to the 'Snakes and Ladders' board below, rather than a short straight path. It'll take as long as it takes, and won't be over tomorrow, or the day after, as much as we'd both like for that to be the case.

Who said this journey would be straight forward?

So there we have it.

We're not getting carried away with things yet. We've learnt that we can't. At least we have an outline on what to expect over the next few weeks.

We'll continue to live by the matra "day by day" for the time being.

Thanks for reading.