Gamma Knife worked

I have, since the Gamma Knife procedure, had another surgery. This time I left the hospital with fewer parts. I had a complete hysterectomy and have another scar to add to the collection. One of my dear friends came to stay with me to keep me distracted and drove me around for two weeks while I healed. I was extremely appreciative of her visit because I was sore, tired, and grouchy. I am hoping this improves several problems, including the failed uterine ablation, the horrid menstrual migraines, and the pain that I have on top of the chronic migraines. After the surgery, my doctor said I had Adenomyosis, which explains why I had the extremely painful cramps during my periods.

I have seen my doctor who was in charge of the Gamma Knife procedure and was able to tell him how I felt about the pain I experienced. "Well, we do things a bit differently since you had your procedure," he told me.

He described a new machine in which some patients can be fitted with a suctioned mask, avoiding the pins in the skull altogether. And, speaking of those pins, when I expressed the pain experienced when the frame was taken off my head, he said they now give patients a shot of morphine when they take the frame off. They realize the headaches patients get are "extremely painful." I wonder why it took them thousands of procedures to finally do this. I am glad to hear others are getting more pain relief during the procedure than what was offered to me but I am confused as to why it took them this long.

The good news is that the Gamma Knife worked. The latest MRI shows a small reduction of the size of the tumor. My next MRI will be in six months but I will be returning to the clinic before the end of the year so that the transplant team can check on the lungs.

In January I will be celebrating year THREE with my recycled lungs! Even though I still deal with a lot of pain issues and an uncertain future, I am so grateful. I was once on a list where twenty-two people die each day waiting for a transplant but I was one of the lucky ones. I received a life-saving transplant because someone said YES to organ donation.

Gamma Knife Radiation

I am now over two months out from the Gamma Knife radiation. I can now rate it up there with the some of the top hated procedures. I guess I cannot complain about heart catherizations without sedation anymore after experiencing that. The frame was absolutely awful. But, I'm a big baby when it comes to people messing with my head anyway. The pressure of the frame was extremely painful, to the point where it felt as though my skull would crack when they were screwing the pins into it. The process includes only a tad bit of sedation so I was fully aware and alert. They injected lidocaine into the pin sites and then they screwed the four pins of the frame, two on the forehead and two on the back of the head, through the skin and tissue all the way to the skull. I was hoping they'd put me in some sort of twilight sedation but that was not the case. I was extremely agitated and upset.

By the time my CT scan was done and I had waited around for some time, the lidocaine had worn off and the pin sites were sore. They offered no pain killers and I had a migraine. The actual Gamma Knife procedure was 80 minutes long and I had to lie flat with my head still in the Gamma Knife machine. The weight of my head was basically on the two pin sites and by then they were sore and my head was throbbing. I had taken my migraine medication but I had a frame squeezing my skull and four pins screwed through my head and I was trying to tolerate lying 80 minutes on two of them poking me directly through the back of my head.

Surprisingly removing the frame hurt and caused a strange intense headache that lasted about an hour after it was removed. I still had a migraine but suffered from the pain of the frame too. Afterwards, the nurse tended to the pin sites, which were oozing a bit and swollen.

I was able to leave after I was settled and bandaged up. I felt nauseated at first, especially with the migraine, but was able to eat a little later in the day. For the first couple of days I slept a lot. My pin sites remained swollen for several days and were sore for more than a week. I had an area on the left side of my scalp that remained numb for a couple of weeks.

Now I wait until we do the follow up MRIs. That will let us know whether it was all worth the trouble. Hopefully the Gamma Knife radiation stopped the growth of the tumor or killed it completely.