The radio - and the day after

So, I went to the Hospital to have my first session of the 25 planned of "Fraccionated Stereotactic Radiotherapy". They were very nice, as always; they put my personal mask, and the treatment started. I felt a strange flavour in my mouth when it started, it was quite strange. But I felt no pain at all, or sickness, or dizziness. In ten minutes it had finished. Everything was perfectly normal. I was told to come back today, as it was planned from Monday to Friday.

I have gone to work this morning, as usual. Everybody has been very kind asking how I'm feeling. But then, my mother has phoned me:

My endocrinologist has phoned home to tell me that they are operating me again. He and the neurosurgeons team has been looking at some MRI or CT Scan (I do not know which one) and have found out that the tumor has moved. It is so incredible, it has changed its position so now it is accesible to have a second surgery. He has told my mom that I have to go on Tuesday Morning to see him and he will explain everything to me. He has also said, of course, that I should not go back to radiotherapy, maybe in the future I'll need it, but not now.

I still cannot believe it, I think it is good that they want to operate me again.

The first day with Radio

So here I am, finally updated!

They phoned home yesterday to tell me that I should go today to the Hospital. So, today is my first day with the Radio. I suppose that I will feel nothing. I am very happy and also very nervous, in one hour it will be done. I am sure that during these 25 sessions it will become a rutine, but today I'm quite nervous.

I will keep you informed!

Preparing for Radiotherapy

Winter

The operation

My operation was set on October 16th. I went to the Hospital the week before in order to get all the preop tests done, and Doctors also told me that "it" hadn't reduced with the meds. They explained to me that due to its size, it had expanded upwards (pressing the optic chiasm) downwards (invading spheniod sinus) and sidewards (invading both cavernous sinuses, and pressing right carotid artery). Apart from that, my GH was 33.60 ng/ml, which was even higher than in June. These were wonderful news!

There was also the possibility to have the operation through my forehead, but they would see in the Operation Room. Really calming!

Anyway, there was no choice, so I just fell asleep, and woke up! And it was over! I was in the ICU, my nose filled with lints and a great pain in both sides of the back of my head. I touched my forehead and happily could find out that there was nothing... I asked a nurse if I had something in the back of my head and she touched just two bumps, she said that they had probably been caused by something to fix my head to the operation table. That was great because it was the only pain!

In the ICU I was connected to a machine to control my heart beats, my blood pressure, the oxygen in the blood and a tube to pee. I could hardly move, but I was happy. Slowy I was waking up from anaesthesia. Later, my Neurosurgeon came and told me that it was very soft so they had been able to remove a great part of it, by the nose. In the visit time (from 18.00 to 18.30) my parents told me that I had been inside from 9.00 am till 14.00, for what Doctors had said to take just two hours. Also came in to see me my grandma, two aunts, my brother, and two friends... it was great to see them, and all of them told me that I looked great!

I spent the whole night in the ICU, it was long and a bit sad, because I could see the rest of the people who were there and all of them were very sick... This is when you realize that, although you have had a terrible luck, there is a lot of people who is much worse than you.

Next morning they took my to my previous room. They found insipidus diabetes (I had to pee one week in bottles) till they decided that I was cured. I went home on October 25th, with a new round of blood tests and an appointment withmy Endo for November 28th.

The summer

The day after I came out from the Hospital, I went to a Funfair and had a ride on the roller coaster in Warner’s Park, near Madrid. It was HORRIBLE. Something moved inside my head and it started hurting so much… the ride was horrible. I came down and the pain stopped, but after that, each movement in my head caused me pain. I went back to the hospital, and they made me a CT Scan, to see whether the tumor was bleeding. Fortunately, everything was normal. The doctor told me that I wasn’t supposed to go to Funfairs. I thought that someone could have told me before about it. As the days were passing by, the pain started to dissapear, but it took it two weeks to dissapear...

The summer was quite long, let’s say. The Somatuline Autogel shots caused me, apart from a pain in my back, strong diarrheas, and I also was a little “feverish”. I was worried about my temperature, but I went to the doctor and he told me that maybe they were caused because my tumor was reducing… Well, it was not a summer to remember!

I had an appointment onfor the 15th of September to have a new MRI done, to find out whether I had had the luck to be in the 30% of the people whose tumor reduces. The picture on the left is from that day. I also had scheduled some more blood tests on the 28th of August to see how my GH was (IGF1: 477 ng/ml, GH:33.60 ng/ml)
Also, I started taking pictures of myself from time to time, to see if something was changing.

Diagnosis

So, I went to the Neurosurgeon with my mother on 20th of June. He told me that I had a pituitary tumor, that it was benign and that I needed to stay at the Hospital several days to have some tests done. It was quite a shock for me. I was told that there was no room at the Neurosurgery Wind, so they gave me a bed at the Endocrinology Wind. I didn’t know that it was related to the Hormones! As soon as I was given a bed and changed my clothes, a Doctor came in and told me that I was suffering from Acromegaly. He didn’t know who I was or why I was staying there. It seemed that my face was so acromegalic, and he explained a little about my disease, and all the changes that were supposed to have happened in my body.

I stayed at the Hospital for 10 days. I have to say that all the doctors that were passing by, told me that I had acromegaly. This made me sad, because my face is so obviously acromegalic… And nobody had told me before. My parents took to the doctors some pictures of me from the previous years, and they told me that my face had started changing ¡10 years ago! I had all these blood tests done, an MRI, and I was told that it was so huge that I could not have the surgery done at that time. They told me it was too risky because of it size and position (compression of the carotid arterys). So, they prescribed me “Somatuline Autogel 120 mg” shots, once a month, during 4 months. I had a 30% chance that with this medication the tumor reduced. And I was told to be back at the Hospital in October, to have my surgery done.

They also gave me the results of the tests:
GH: 32.20 ng/ml
IGF1: 734 ng/ml
Dimensions of it: 4.5cm x 4.5cm x 3.5cm
And I do not know how to translate the medical name for the lost of the upper outer quarter of the visual field in each eye, due to the compression of the optic nerve.