Offensive Thinking

It Had to Happen Eventually

Posted: 2015-05-03

One of the therapy rooms at the HIT<br><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0">CC BY 3.0</a> <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kuebi">Andreas Kübelbeck</a>

Let me preface this blog post with stating that I’m still feeling fine, I’m actually feeling stronger than ever. With that out of the way, you might have noticed that I haven’t written anything in quite a while. To be honest, I’ve been putting this post off for quite a bit now. Not because I’m afraid of the things that are to come or anything like that, but simply because of a lack of time, or, more accurately, my current priority of spending as much time as possible with my daughter.

So, what are the big news? I’ll be undergoing radiation treatment this year. Why? Because my MRIs show in a long-term review that there are slow-growing tumor cells and we want to do something about that before it becomes a real issue down the road. As the title says, this was to be expected to happen eventually, so I wasn’t too surprised when my oncologist told me. Of course, that’s what the rational part of my brain said (I guess it’s the part that is farthest away from the tumor, hah!), the emotional part was more like

“WTF? It’s only been four years!”

And then rational brain answered

“Dude, listen to what you’re saying. It’s been four years since you’ve been diagnosed, that’s already quite some time for someone with a brain tumor.”

“But I’ve heard of people who didn’t have to do anything for, like, 10+ years!”

“But you didn’t expect to be the one outlier in the statistics, right? You know better, just be grateful that you’ve already had so much time, you’re feeling healthy, you had the opportunity to become a father, it’s only a precaution, the cells are slow-growing, they told you about this when you began the journey etc. etc.”

“True, but I don’t want to! I’m scared, what if it accelerates tumor growth instead of slowing it down, I will lose my hair where they are directing the beam at, I’ll be fatigued, nauseous and all that crap…”

“You lived through Chemo just fine, you are in great health right now, you’ll look badass with a shaved head and the chance that growth will be accelerated is slim compared to the tumor growing if you don’t do anything! So quit whining!”

And so on and so forth (they argued for quite some time, I’ll spare you the details, both of them can get rather heated in their arguments).

Anyway, my oncologist left it up to me to decide whether I would want to do another round of Chemo or to try radiation. Apparently, there’s no right or wrong in my current situation, it’s just that I should do something before the tumor cells decide to grow into any important parts of what is left of my brain. So the part which is responsible for my motor skills, which is affected the most if my tumor decides to grow again, teamed up with rational brain and convinced emotional brain to try radiation therapy. If I have to do something, at least make it exciting and new! If everything goes as planned, I’ll be doing the therapy in Heidelberg in their shiny new Ion-Beam Therapy Center (sounds like something out of Star Trek, right?).

I’ll keep you updated.