3mm

It’s been 3 years since Jeff’s last chemo treatment and he has been having MRIs every 4 months since. Last time jeff saw the oncologist, I was hoping he would extend the MRIs to every 6 months since the results had been so positive for so long. I was even a little disappointed in October when he said he was going to schedule in 4 months again and then maybe after that he would switch to 6 months. Over the last year Jeff’s recovery has improved so much that he has been able to watch the kids while I work full time and he’s been taking on extra chores around the house. He has been making my hectic schedule an incredible amount easier as he has done  the dishes every night while I study for my primary care paramedic diploma. I have noticed over the last month or so that Jeff’s speech has been sounding increasingly mumbled and nasal. He’s had a lack of motivation but I easily brushed it off as a seasonal depression with it being the end of winter and so ferociously cold out. I was so wrapped up in school, working full time, Malcolm breaking his arm and then both the boys getting what we suspect was chicken pox, that I wasn’t even thinking about the appointment jeff had with his oncologist. They have become so routine at this point I just assumed he would say everything looks good and we would see him in 6 months. I got home on Friday evening after a week of being away at school and Jeff broke the bad news. Earlier that day he had seen the oncologist and found out that the tumour in his brain had grown. They found a 3mm sized lesion on the right side surrounded by an increased amount of fluid. I was able to talk to the dr on monday and got a little bit more information. The oncologist had a discussion with the neurosurgeons at the university of alberta hospital and they said, at this point, the new lesion is so small that surgery would be very difficult at this time. They would like to see an MRI 4-6 weeks after the most recent MRI so it sounds like that will be scheduled for 2-3 weeks from now. If the lesion has grown, the surgeons will have no choice but to do a surgery to obtain a biopsy and determine the most appropriate treatment. If the lesion has stayed the same size, they will continue to closley monitor Jeff. In the meantime, the oncologist would like to make sure there has not been a spread of cancer anywhere else in Jeffs body and has scheduled an MRI of his spine, a CT of his entire body, and a spinal tap. These will take place this week and next week and we will patiently await the results.

How it all started

I have had a few people ask me how we found out Jeff had a brain tumor in the beginning. I went back in the blog and realized I never wrote about before the diagnosis and partially wanted to write it for myself before I forget any more details. Jeff's friends from high school have said that Jeff always liked to tell the same stories over and over and they used to laugh at him (with him) about it. They wrote it off as one of his quirks. Right before jeff and I got married, he was going to university in lethbridge and he was having trouble with his vision so he got a prescription for glasses. Glasses weren't new to him as he wore them when he was younger but he hadn't needed them for his teen and young adult years. Soon after getting married, Jeff was really struggling with school. He worked hard and got extra help but his grades were poor. I noticed that he would completely forget things that should have been quite obviously memorable. One example, his debit card was connected to both our chequing and savings account. It cost $5 every time we used the debit card to take money out of the savings account so we were both clear that we should only use the chequing account for everyday purchases. One month Jeff used the savings account several times causing us over $100 in service fees. I freaked! I blew up at jeff about it (not my finest moment) and then called the bank and they actually refunded the service fees for the month. I actually think this was our first married fight (me freaking out more than anything). So, I thought it was over, Jeff knew never to make purchases with the savings account and we were happy again. The next month when I received that statement, the exact same thing had happened. Jeff was withdrawing from the savings account costing us hundreds of dollars in service fees. I took jeff to the bank and had them remove the account from his card so that couldn't happen again and started to wonder if something more was going on with him. Jeff had lots of memory issues that we shrugged off until I saw a commercial for adult ADD. I went online and took the test for him and it was like they were describing Jeff with every question. He made an appointment with a family doctor and they prescribed him an ADD medication.  While all of this was going on, Jeff's vision was changing frequently and had 3 different glasses prescriptions within a year. The ADD medication did help Jeff to focus in school more but his memory was still an issue. There are many examples I could talk about to explain the odd memory behaviours but in the end, I told Jeff he needed to go back to the doctor and request they do a ct to give us some reassurance that nothing was wrong with his brain. Throughout our marriage, I had told Jeff several times, I thought he had a brain tumour but never seriously considered it as a true possibility. It took multiple visits to the dr before he finally agreed to send jeff for a ct. This whole process of feeling that something might be wrong to coming to a diagnosis took about a year. In late March 2010, jeff had a ct and I had honestly forgot he was at the ct that day. He called me from the hospital and told me they wouldn’t let him leave without an MRI and he was not to drive himself home. They didn’t tell him what they had found but we knew it couldn’t be good. I got to the hospital just as Jeff got out of the MRI and the radiologist brought us back to look at the results. He found a massive tumour and was surprised to see how little deficits Jeff had in comparison to the tumour size. He was scheduled for surgery about 2 weeks later on April 1st 2010.