I think doctors view recovery differently from patients. Historically, AN surgery at one time was pretty risky. In general, after brain surgery the doctors are interested in whether you have a pulse, can breathe on your own, and are able to take in food. Medical sort of things. Once you can walk out of the hospital, wobbly or not, you have already recovered in one sense in their minds.
They used to think facial palsy was just par for the course with AN surgery, and only more recently have been interested in trying to prevent that. So if you have a lingering symptom or two, they see it as a minor thing. I don't fault them for that, their first concern is rightly whether you are medically sound again - no CSF leaks, things like that. The issue of quality of life after treatment is only just beginning to get some serious attention from the medical world.
I think most patients are functional again by week 8, so the 4-8 week recovery time they quote seems reasonable as far as it goes. We of course want to know when everything is going to be perfect again, just like it was before (was it?), so we tend to see the recovery as a longer process. It takes more time to adjust to the changes and feel at home with them, and from our point of view total recovery is usually longer.
Steve:
I'm going to take the liberty of using your cogent post as a jumping off point for some additional comments. I know you won't mind.
What I've noticed from reading the stories on these forums is that, surprise, surprise, the neurosurgeons who operate on acoustic neuromas are
specialists. Being specialists, they only focus on
their area of expertise, i.e. brain, spine, whatever. Any post-op issues that are not strictly within their sphere of expertise, such as facial paralysis, eye problems, hearing loss, headaches, etc, are either ignored or the AN patient is referred to another physician that presumably deals with the kind of issue the patient is presenting. This seems to be quite common and, probably, ethically defensible.
I was fortunate to engage a neurosurgeon that cared as much about my post-op quality of life as he did about successfully debulking my AN without killing me. He had been doing AN removals for decades, starting back in the 'dark ages' (1970's) when facial paralysis was assumed to be normal following AN removal surgery . This neurosurgeon was never comfortable with that and had been seeking ways to ensure a better quality of post-op life for his AN patients. In my case, he de-bulked the tumor, then sent me for FSR, all with the express purpose of not only destroying the tumor but sparing my cranial nerves and helping me to avoid the kinds of problems some AN patients endure following surgery and/or radiation. He succeeded and it wasn't by luck or chance. That success was a result of careful planning on my neurosurgeons part along with that of a brilliant radiation oncologist working with him. Well, that and a lot of prayer, of course. I give God the ultimate credit for my successful surgery & radiation. Unfortunately, this kind of surgeon is somewhat rare. Most care only about getting the AN patient through the surgery alive and relatively well, as Steve pointed out. If you can stagger out of the hospital, you're 'recovered', in their view. Basically, they've done what they were paid for - removed the tumor - and now, you're either on your own or another doctors problem. This seems to be the norm.
As I noted in my previous post (and Steve concurred),
total recovery is usually quite a bit longer. For us impatient types, which seem to be the majority, the healing/recovery time is
always too long. As Steve mentioned, the 4 to 8 week timeframe may be optimistic - but not fallacious.
Jim
