Chief Neuro Oncoologist

On Wednesday, Februahrry 15, we had a 5 hr appt. at NIH (National Institute of Health). We had to get there by 8:00 to go tough security and all. It was pretty tight.
We arrived close to 8:00 and were just a tad late for checking in upstairs. I met with a nurse practioner, Ms. Royce (sort of like Dr. Fine's "right arm") She talked through my medical records from the time I was born to current status. Then she did some tests for my eyes and neuro function. Next, another doctor came in to look at my eyes and said I was textbook. Meaning I was following the book on cases like mine. I didn't have anything new. He told me it should get better or back to normal within a year.
After a little bit of waiting, we went into a conference room to meet with Dr. Fine and Ms. Royce to discuss my plan of action for radiation and chemo.
Right away Dr. Fine encouraged me with how great of a job my surgeons, Dr. Davidson and Dr. Armonda had done. I didn't realize how difficult of a surgery it was with having a tumor directly in the middle of the brain and taking only little pieces at a time.
Often times, you have to have multiple surgeries to get the tumor out or there are complications because of the location. Because of God, that was not the case. I have come out with minimal side effects that appear to be self healing over time; and they were able to take almost everything out, tumor wise. Just the microscopic stuff left.
Instantly that puts me in a "better" group category because of the job they did. My health and age as an adult helps with that too. Because my tumor is seen more in children, babies and children aren't fully developed & the treatment is often worse than the disease and they opt to allow their child to pass on rather than put them through treatment and they die from not being able to fight that. So with adults, most development is complete and because of that, treatment is better tolerated in those who are past adolescence. That is the "better" group. There is a real chance of cure with adults.
Dr. Fine said I should be back to living a normal life around 6 months after treatment. He encouraged me with reminding me of all the medicine they have today to help you through radiation and chemo treatments.
Dr. Fine mentioned this kind of tumor requires chemo & cranial-spinal (head & spinal) radiation. Smaller cells could end up further into the brain, but so far, all of my scans have come back clear. He was very encouraged by those results.
His recommendation is to do radiation in small doses every week day for 6 wks. Lower dose, lower at a time, equals little damage. However, he wants to be aggressive now with starting radiation sooner than later. (Feb. 21)