What caused your AN ?

[Soundy]

I had a severe head injury at four and a lesser concussion at  12... I will be
46 in November...

I had a neck and back injury in April of 1996 and had MRIs and CAT scans of head
then... nothing showed up...

Started having severe migraines in July 1999... MRIs showed nothing then... my migraines
are to left side of head...

In July 2004 the left side of my face went numb and they thought mini stroke ... the AN showed
up in an MRI then... but it was on the right side... numbness was said to be due to migraine
complications and so the AN was found accidently... it just sat there from July 2004 til October
2006... no measurable growth...

Last fall I started having hormone problems that cause long , heavy menstrual cycles that were
pretty much taking over my life... I was losing more blood than my body could replace and had
to have a hysterectomy in march... in April I had to go to neuro because my hearing dropped
and I was having increased dizzyness... I was not suppose to go back for a scan til October but
the AN had hit a growth spurt and doubled in size in those 6 month... my surgeon thinks the
hormonal problems may have triggered growth...

As to what caused it ...who knows

People I know keep telling me this is the type tumor caused by cell phones... since my doctors are
2 hours away and I usually went by myself I got a cell phone for safety reasons and to let people
down here if I was running late so someone could be here to get my two little girls
off school bus... so for me the cell phone came after tumor... didn't have one before

[Joef]

I believe I had the tumor for 20 years... but I had bad poison IVY a couple of years ago ... got a steroid shot.. cleared it up .. but I think it kicked the tumor growth into high gear!! (at least it was about the time I started to notice things) 

[SharonN]

There was a great presentation at the symposium regarding research that's been done to determine a cause.  The presenter was at a conference in Barcelona recently where neurosurgeons compared their findings.  They found no correlation/causation with smoking, cell phone use, computer use, drinking.  Some correlation with loud noise and maybe with estrogen, but those have not been confirmed definitely. 

I rarely use a cell phone,  have never been a smoker, drink in moderation and don't go to rock concerts (God, do I sound boring!)  When music was too loud as a young person, I'd stuff Kleenex in my ears.  Yet here I am with an AN.  Go figure.

So lets not beat ourselves up.  Right now it appears to be a crap shoot.

[Joef]

  They found no correlation/causation with smoking, cell phone use, computer use, drinking.

Good thing !    If you added fishing to the list, you just described me 

[PabloCarlosBudassi]

My last 8 or so years have been every night eating marijuanda on olive oil and editing audio on the computer all night with headphones. No trauma, no cell phone heavy use, no drougs or alcohol, no artificial sweeteners.Also Im vegetarian.

I wonder if the oil or the headphone abuse made my AN grow.

Also I had a cold with sinusitis when traveled by plane and felt my head was going to explode on take off and landing about 15 years ago.

[DizzyMamaIL]

What a neat old thread you found, Pablo.
I never had a head injury. Closest thing was a hit and run driver smashed into the back of my car and I bumped my head last year, but that was well after the dizziness started and the single sided hearing loss, so not likely a cause.
I drink lots of aspartame,
Listened to lots of loud music as a teenager / 20-something,
Lots of cell phone and cordless phone use as a teenager / 20-something
Lots of computer use since a teenager,
Tobacco user for 20 years
Very brief (maybe like 17 years old to 22 years old) "other" smoker
2 pregnancies
Have taken steroids on occasion for acute episodes of asthma.
I've had sinus / ear / nose / throat problems for most of my life... I lose my voice almost every winter, trouble with fluid draining from the Eustachian tubes, asthma, used to get bad bronchitis when I was a smoker.
No known family history of tumors
I was a vegetarian from the age of 13 until the age of 30,
My sinuses were always horrible on planes.

I would love to know what caused this.

[elizabethpoff]

Could it be high fever over105.1
 

[Ugne3030]

Don't drink, don't smoke, never did any drugs, listen to loud music sometimes, bumped my head lots of times, concussions yep, worked with a radar gun for a number of years, put cordless phones and cell phones,  to my AN side - yep, spin the bottle round and round, no body where it will land right now. it is any bodies guess, but would love to read any new studies.

[james e]

I am 66 and I had radiation treatments when I was about 4 years old for swollen adnoids. I remember the fear. The doctor taped lead shields over my eyes. He lowered an x-ray machine to the side of my head, and I was treated that way at least twice. That was a routine treatment back in 1950s.

I believe a study at Yale, might be wrong, suggested that this might have been ONE of the causes of ANs. The stats for kids that were treated that way are staggering.

[arizonajack]

I raised teenagers and had rental properties. The combination of the two must have messed up my head. 

[CHD63]

Hi james e .....

I, also, had high doses of radium to my nasopharyngeal area following a tonsillectomy in the 1950s ..... apparently standard protocol with some ENTs back then.  I was old enough to still remember the burning rods inserted far into my nostrils!!

Several doctors since my AN diagnosis have told me that almost certainly my AN was caused by the huge doses of ionizing radiation I had decades earlier.

So glad my parents never knew about my AN as they would have been devastated that they allowed the doctor to do this.

We cannot undo the past, but we can be cautious regarding drug and/or treatment use in the future.

Clarice

[DizzyMamaIL]

I recently saw a video going around on Facebook about BHA in dog treats causing tumors and looked it up and see it used to be added to lots of human foods, too. So, that's the newest culprit I'm blaming in my head. Grad school is a close second, though.
Mine aren't teenagers yet, so I guess I can't blame that.

[Willbur]

Looks like this thread hasn't been active. I think mainly loud music, possible too much banging my head against the wall and falling on pavement. Aspartame I also suspect. Cell phone maybe, but ive been using it mostly ony left ear since I'm left handed.

[sandyinwisconsin]

This is an interesting topic for me because I will beat myself up until the day I die wondering what caused this tumor.

I have been meaning to start a post asking people if they have or currently are still drinking diet soda. 

I did drink diet soda in my teens and 20's and stopped after I got pregnant because I knew how many bad chemicals are in diet soda.
Then after I stopped drinking it, I heard that diet soda causes brain tumors. When I heard that, I started warning people about diet soda causing brain tumors.
Then in 2013, almost 20 years after I stopped drinking diet soda, I was diagnosed with my brain tumor.

I used to also get a very deep painful stabbing feeling in my head during the years I drank diet soda.

Please respond if you have drank a lot of diet soda. Is this the common link with us? 

Sandy

[Willbur]

This is an interesting topic for me because I will beat myself up until the day I die wondering what caused this tumor.

I have been meaning to start a post asking people if they have or currently are still drinking diet soda. 

I did drink diet soda in my teens and 20's and stopped after I got pregnant because I knew how many bad chemicals are in diet soda.
Then after I stopped drinking it, I heard that diet soda causes brain tumors. When I heard that, I started warning people about diet soda causing brain tumors.
Then in 2013, almost 20 years after I stopped drinking diet soda, I was diagnosed with my brain tumor.

I used to also get a very deep painful stabbing feeling in my head during the years I drank diet soda.

Please respond if you have drank a lot of diet soda. Is this the common link with us? 

Sandy

I was drinking diet soda as I grew older (early teens) until now. I greatly reduced my intake as it started having an effect on me when working out. I believe this could be a possible link, however you would think that more people would be diagnosed with it. My mom who has diabetes has been drinking diet soda for years and doesn't have the same type of condition, however she did have growths on her thyroids. I'm strictly drinking kombucha and water from now on.