Posted on October 9, 2017
Balancing the need to conserve energy and it being unfair for the entire Facebook & Twitter social media Universes to know the latest on me while you don’t, I am simply cutting & pasting the latest medical news on me from my Facebook post from last week (Twitter also just got a copy & pasted Facebook post).
As a reminder: I keep Facebook in constant up to the moment update on my medical situation whereas my personal blog has a 1-2 week lag time, but this is a big one. ALL of my medical Facebook posts are “public” so there is no need to be a Facebook member to read! Just hit here: https://www.facebook.com/marsilje
Hitting the above link or jpeg below will not pull up cute puppy or kid photos just medical stuff!
Copy & Pasted Facebook Post:
Hi Everyone, this post is a bit long but I have some very important/major medical updates to share for those interested!
Before the good news, first the disappointing news… I found out last night that I have (5) brain metastatic tumors, including one that is causing near-term medical danger. These are the probable cause of many of my recent symptoms (vomiting, general weakness, near-distance vision deterioration etc.). This is a case in point to let your oncologist know side effects! I honestly thought they were due to toxicity of my recent checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy (very plausible). Upon hearing the side effects, my EXCELLENT oncologist immediately sprang into ASAP action (case in point on the benefits of having as good an oncologist as possible) – recognizing that the same symptoms could also be due to brain tumors, he got ASAP brain scans etc. lined up for me so that I reported the side effects Monday AM and I was diagnosed on Wed. night with treatment plan in place on Thursday morning!
Now the GOOD News!
– All (5) brain tumors look to be treatable with targeted SBRT radiation (Whew!!). This 5-day radiation treatment will start ASAP due to the tumor presenting medical danger. Brain tumors are actually highly treatable if you catch them early, especially if SBRT is possible. So even though yes… it really sucks to have secondary brain cancer (I didn’t see that one coming!) – both my radiation oncologist & I are highly optimistic it is a solvable problem!
– Hopefully as I treat the brain tumors, my side effects listed above (including related worrisome weight loss) will get better!
– In the brain scan there are signs that my current self-made immunotherapy witches brew {FOLFIRI, Avastin, Tecentriq} *may* be working! All the tumors showed signs of inflammation and the largest one showed signs of interior necrosis (the other smaller ones are too small to assess). The large one actually looks on brain scan similar to how a brain tumor would look *after* radiation therapy! I have a full body CT-scan next week to assess if tumors elsewhere in my body show similar effects or not….
