Bella the Brain Pain

Bella, the Brain Pain

Last Thursday was Effie’s first birthday. We celebrated with a glass of tonic - no alcohol while on antibiotics  She’s done pretty well this year, I guess it was a steep learning curve for both of us.

But now, there is a new girl in my body parts - Bella. She is only about 35 mm in diameter, and is pretty well round, and looks very white compared to her pinky grey surroundings. (Barby was 60 mm)  You might have guessed from her name that she resides in my Cerebellum a part of the brain towards the back, near the spinal cord.  My cerebellum itself looks like a sort of thick butterfly - with Bella situated almost in the middle near the top..

It was fun looking through the layers of my brain. The outside level was almost like a cartoon of a raccoon - huge black eye sockets and the other identifiable bits of the face. Then after about 7 layers through, slice by slice, we got to the Cerebellum.  Bella doesn’t look all that much of a threat.  But she must be pretty sturdy stuff because, probably during the surgery, over a year ago now,  somehow she made her way from my colon along either the blood stream or the lymph system to about as far away as anything could get.  The professor answered our question about whether she could be a primary cancer by saying that the team of all eminent surgeons all thought it was a colon metastasis.  And I guess she has a point.  

When I heard about my new cancer, I read all I could about it on the internet, as you do, and came to the wrong conclusion that the treatment I am getting called stereotactic radiotherapy (or cyber knife surgery) was going to zap it dead.  And  thought that was a good result. But the Prof told us that it wouldn’t be blitzed, only put to sleep, to wake again, with all its potential damage still in tact, in maybe a year or so.  

Tomorrow I go to have another MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging) which is very noisy, but they need to see if Bella has grown since the last oe was done a month ago.

Then on Tuesday, they will make me a mask which will hold my head absolutely still for the 40 minutes or so of the radiation treatment  The mask is made of soft plastic with holes in it, and they warm it up and mould it to your face and back of head, and then they can screw it to the base of the bed I will be lying on, while the various radiation beams go at it one by one.  I seem to think there are seven or so of them, but they take it in turns instead of all concentrating on poor little Bella all at once. 

And Monday the 8th will be the big day. So sleep well and long, little Bella