Caregiving

[livingwith]

My mom was first diagnosed in 1994, and is still alive today.
She has a tumor called an oligodendrioma and she’s been fighting it for nearly 13 years.
When the tumor was first discovered in late 1994, they did surgery and then many months of radiation. It was the size of a ping pong ball. It was believed that it was gone, so then she did the usual MRI’s every 3 months, then 6 months, then 1 year and then up to every 2 years. In between one of the two years, her tumor grew back to abo...Read the full article

[rip_mama]

My mom just recently passed away march 19th of this year with this type of brain tumor. She had it for 10 years, so she basically had it since I was 10 years old. They found it in her 30's, but she didn't have like headaches, they found it because of her having weakness in the left side of her body. She had 3 brain surgeries in total. It came back every 4 years and everytime there was usually a seizure that occured and thats how we knew it was back. During the last brain surgery in 2006 they couldn't remove all of the tumor, they could only remove half. The doctor said the tumor had turned into a rapid growing tumor instead of the slow growing one it was before. She had to have physical therapy after the surgery to regain her left side, and her speech was a little slurred. She did regain most of her left side, and a month after surgery she started to take temodar. It didn't do anything for her, she took it for a few months. Then my mom had radiation and a MRI after that, and the doctor said it was shrinking, which was not true because the next MRI it was growing rapidly and spreading out even more. So he tried a chemo that is for Colon cancer, can't think of the name? But he said it was effective with other patients with this brain tumor and she also had avastin with it, and she did this up until like October of last year, and then found out it wasn't working. The avastin was making her tumor bleed so she was put on decatron and stayed on it till she passed. The doctor said that nothing they tried was working but he would still do chemo if she wanted, my mom and our family discussed it and she made the decision to not have chemo since it wasn't doing any good. So the doctor ordered hospice and about 2 months later she passed away at the age of 44. I hope one day there will be a cure for it. Your mothers situation sounds a lot like my mom. My mom had the shakes a lot also. The end was nothing like I had expected though which it is different than everyone. My mom was very strong until the couple days before she passed. She even ate a little the night before she passed away. We had expected her to have lots of seizures, but she didn't have not one seizure. She went very peacefully. I see your story was written last year so I have no idea what is going on now. But your in my prayers.