I've posted som scattershot posts, but there's such great support here that I wanted to really introduce myself.
I'm Jean, a 33 year old mother of 3 and attorney. I delivered my 3rd daughter in February, went back to work 6 weeks later and started getting classic migraines. My doctor told me to try Excedrin migraine and come back it things got worse.
For a while, I did feel like things were getting better, then sometime in June things started getting worse. It was so gradual. Weird pressure feelings in my head that came and went, headaches and a general crappy feeling. Everyone, including myself, chalked most of it up to the stress and exertion of working fulltime and having 3 kids under 5 years old. I did not go back to my doctor. A friend at work has a family full of migraine sufferers, and every symptom I came up with, one of her family members had. I just kept telling myself that I was suffering from migraine-related symptoms.
My husband started urging me to go back to my doctor, but I put it off. I realized that pretty much every day I was having these symptoms. What put me over the edge was a feeling one evening that gravity had increased and that I was being sucked towards the floor.
My doctor looked at me funny when I said that the pain was the least bothersome part of my self-diagnosed migraine condition. She sent me for an MRI and gave me a referral for a neurologist.
I had the MRI at 7:15 on September 9. I took the disc home with me. I was home not more than 30 minutes when the on-call doctor at my practice called and told me that there is a mass in my head, which had all the markings of being benign. Since the office was closed, she told me to head into the ER to get checked out.
I ended up being admitted overnight and scared out of my mind. After I saw the neurosurgeon during rounds the next day, I was released and told to get a few consults in Philadelphia asap. The further up the chain of neurosurgeans I got, the less worried they seemed. With a 2.9 cm tumor and being only 33 I assumed that I would opt for surgery. But, Dr. Grady at HUP recommended Gamma Knife and Dr. Andrews at Jeff recommended fractionated stereotactic radiation on a Novalis machine. I liked Dr. Andrews a lot better and he cited a better chance of success on my tumor, which at 2.9 cms is at the edge of what Gamma Knife can do. According to Dr. Andrews, the fractionated approach (25-30 sessions) has a better track record of successfully killing larger tumors.
I started my 26 sessions of radiation on Monday and, quite frankly, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. I think that I'm coming down with a virus my almost-5 year-old is just getting over, so that may be complicating things. Right now I'm feeling headaches, nausea and fatigue. I'm trying to take it day by day and see how things go, but of course, I worry that the symptoms will only get worse. I have been working a few hours in the afternoon after I'm back from treatment, but it's a real struggle.
Jean
