Hey Pandas, What Is The Thing No One Lets You Talk Enough About? (Closed)

Sometimes we have an experience or a bit of knowledge that we have so much to say about but no one asks or has the patience to listen.

Like: What was it like to have cancer? Who was so and so in the past and what was important about them?

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TLDR: extensive account of my first brain surgery and what led up to it.

TW:Several Medical terms and Diagnoses, my stupid humor.

So many things to say, being diagnosed with a brain tumor at 27 was rough. I was working full time. One day I was at work, and I suddenly awoke to these strange men touching me (Just EMTs doing their job, but extremely disconcerting post seizure.)

Get loaded into ambulance, ask coworker for my purse and can they call my mom (She was just barely recovered from uterine cancer herself)

Get to hospital, CT scan "Oh no you have a mass in your head! that's what caused your seizure." So I spent the rest of the night in the E. R.

I felt completely beat up.(that's what happens when your coworkers hold you in your chair as you have a seizure) I had recently figured out I have a gelatin allergy( this is relevant I promise) and was starving since I hadn't eaten since breakfast, because of my allergy they couldn't give me Jello like they normally would for hungry people. The nicest nurses in the place got me a plate of cut-up fruit. Now just imagine eating pineapple with a tongue you have chomped to shreds during your Tonic-clonic/grand mal seizure. I was so grateful even though, despite the pain.

I finally fell asleep and when I woke up again they had moved me into a private room.I needed the bathroom badly since it had been something like 16+ hours in hospital, when no one answered the call button to come unhook the necessary things so I could go I just pulled the lead wires off and went. Apparently a sudden loss of input from those lines really upsets people. Cue angry nurse waiting for me to come out of bathroom.

So because they did not know what the mass in my head was they started pushing IV antibiotics, they have to put in a PICC line and it takes them three tries to get it right. A PICC line is a catheter they thread up a vein so they can drop medicine directly into the large veins around your heart. They kept threading it up into my neck instead of to my heart so when they administered the Vancomycin I got RMS. After that they pulled the line and tried a third time and got it right.

The next step is MRI of head to get a better look at the mass. It comes back as it does not appear to be an infection but we're going to keep using the antibiotics just in case. After getting neurology to go over the MRI, "Congrats it's a tumor!"

Astrocytoma diagnosis. Let's biopsy it to make sure this isn't cancerous. I sign the papers for the burr hole biopsy and get composed for my cancer diagnosis.

Wait a minute, on second thought this has apparently been there for years as your skull has grown outward slightly to accommodate it. Since it's been there so long and this is the first problem you've had with it we don't think it's likely to be cancer and we don't want to aggravate it into becoming cancerous.We're just going to try controlling the symptoms with medication. I was talking with the Surgeon's assistant and asking why they weren't willing to check it out/operate when I wanted them to.

She must've been having a bad day because she blew up at me. " You should be happy it's not getting tested, There's a 17 yr old boy dying in X hospital because of a brain tumor." (More about why this angers me to this day later in the story)

I take my allotted time off work and adjust to my new anti-seizure medications. During my 6 months of permitted leave I continue to have break-through seizures and get taken to the hospital each time.

Finally my doctors say that since they can't control my symptoms with medications anymore they will do surgery to remove the tumor.

I asked the surgeon to take pictures during surgery. I love all medical oddities and thought it would be super cool to have pictures of my brain( Plus I am one of the few humans with photographic proof that they have a brain)

Part 2 to come soon

Hey Pandas, What Is The Thing No One Lets You Talk Enough About? (Closed)

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