5 years on

I recently had an MRI and a followup with a neurosurgeon here in Sydney and they advised that there's no sign of growth in my brain. Similarly, they said the surgical sites were still visible in terms of scar tissue within my brain but no changes other than that.
They gave me the all clear and told me not to worry about any further followups as I am now officially in the clear. Frankly that's the best possible outcome at this point in time so I'm pretty happy about that.
It's fairly unlikely that I will continue to update this blog but as ever, leave a comment if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer, particularly if you're going to have surgery yourself. It was a pretty harrowing experience all told and I'm extremely glad to put it behind me.

2 years on...

It's now been a little over 2 years since the surgery and all seems to be going well. Surgery was late October 2010, it's now December 2012.
I haven't noticed any complications or ongoing issues so I think it's probably safe to say I've made it through. I still have a massive scar under my hair that I don't think is going anywhere any time soon.

My only real conclusion at this point is "don't have brain surgery if you can avoid it". That's more or less it.
Again, leave me a comment if you have any questions and I'll endeavor to answer as best I can.

More than a year on

I've been very very slack about keeping up with this blog and with good reason, it was to chronicle my brain surgery and that was more than a year ago!

So, the good news, I'm absolutely fine. In the past year I've moved to Sydney (from Auckland), gotten a couple of different jobs in that time and made some friends.

With regards to my brain I haven't noticed any issues what so ever. I still have a huge scar across my head but my hair covers that and mentally I feel absolutely fine. No one has commented that I've done anything unusual. In saying that, I've been away from the people I know best (having moved countries and all that). I've had a few headaches but nothing more than the irregular migraines I used to get before the surgery (unrelated to the surgery).

I was supposed to arrange to see a specialist when I got here but that kind of fell by the wayside and life got on top of me. I really ought to schedule it through my GP.

This will most likely be the last post on here as there's not much to say anymore. I don't foresee myself having any more brain surgery so this all becomes a little redundant.

Hopefully you've enjoyed reading this or found it potentially useful if you're going in for surgery, who knows!

Thanks
Richard

Better days

It's been over two months since I had the surgery and at least a month since I noticed any kind of side effects. I'd pronounce myself better. In fact I did and dyed my hair. The wound on my scalp is healed, although there is still a protruding scar and something of a divot in my head.
I've had an MRI and a CT scan recently and both of these went ok. I'll be having an appointment with the surgeon again in about 2 weeks to follow up about these. Basically it's to ensure there's no sign of the cyst and to see if my skull has begun to heal. There's a chance that it never will and that I'll have to be careful as it's only held in place by some small strips of titanium.
Hopefully it's begun to fuse up again as I'd like to get back into mountain biking and snowboarding this coming winter.

In other news I'm moving to Sydney in about 3.5 weeks.

Back to the real world

It's now a little shy of a month since the surgery and I'm heading back to work in about 45 minutes. I've been keeping an eye out for any signs of strange behaviour and I have to say I think I'm more or less fine.
I no longer get tired from concentrating, at least no more tired than normal and I am able to maintain an activity for a sustained period without issue.

I have noticed the occasional word finding difficulty but I'm not sure that this is the result of the surgery or merely paranoia. I think it's more likely paranoia than anything, I definitely had some difficulty with this previously.

I'm fairly interested to see how I handle 8 hours of actual concentration and work. Only time will tell. I'm fairly confident of my ability to survive it however!

Past and present

I've given up trying to keep the titles of these blogs consistent and ordered. I've lost track of the days.

I had the surgery on the 29th so a little less than 3 weeks ago. I'm almost back to myself again. I'm thinking and behaving normally and my scalp is almost completely healed. Unfortunately major surgery and a couple of weeks of doing nothing has left me very weak. I get tired really quickly so it's going to take a fair amount of work before I can go back to regular life.

I'm trying to keep my days busy, lots of people to catch up with and things to do around the house but I still get so exhausted mentally just doing that. I have trouble concentrating on things for more than 20-30 minutes at a time, even varied things like video games which I used to be able to do for hours. Reading articles is hard work, I tend to get distracted and wander off in the middle of them. I imagine this is just something I have to work at and build up again.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to post them in the comments and I will endeavour to answer them!

Going back to what actually happened in hospital;

Once I was out of the HDU I went back into the regular ward where I had my own room. It was a pretty sweet change, much nicer to be alone and not constantly harassed by the other patients.
One of the things you don't anticipate is that they wake you up every hour in the HDU to check that you haven't had a sudden stroke or some other complication so you get very little rest and feel exhausted the entire time. Suddenly only being checked on every 4-6 hours makes a world of difference in terms of how you feel.
Plus being able to get up and walk around makes things a lot better. After lying down for 4 days straight you get insanely sore hips and knees. It takes a lot of effort to get up and get walking again.

Annnnd I've run out of attention.

Backtracking 3 - Problem child

I've been posting updates from my phone as for whatever reason I couldn't sustain the concentration necessary to use a PC but the phone was fine (what?). So I'm back on the PC now and finding things much easier.

Anyway, following the last post I was talking about the other inmates in the HDU.
The last was a late middle aged woman who seemed initially more or less sane. However, the truth was quickly revealed as she turned out to be just as, if not more looney than the others. She would press the nurse call button repeatedly just to get a small power kick out of the nurses coming running. She'd always claim it was an accident... but it was obvious given how regularly she did it that it wasn't. Plus she'd regularly get into arguments with the nurses and accuse them of stealing from her or something equally stupid. I'm not really clear on what she was actually doing, I was pretty woozy at this point.

In the HDU they wake you up every hour of every day to make sure you haven't lapsed into a coma or something equally terrible. Each wake up they ask you if you know where you are and what the date is. The desire to troll the nurses is pretty strong but it's definitely not in your best interest given that at this point you're so weak you need assistance going to the bathroom and eating.

Thankfully I got past all that fairly quickly. I made it out of the HDU in about 3 days and was turning down painkillers and anti-nausea meds by about day 5 if I recall rightly. Not because I'm tough mind you but because all that stuff made me feel so much worse. Tramadol and Morphine make me want to throw up more than they kill the pain so they weren't the right painkillers for me. Thankfully paracetemol worked pretty well on me so I wasn't without pain relief.

After the HDU I was moved to my own room in the regular ward which was a totally different world to the challenges of the HDU.