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News, Rants & Site InfoJuly 12, 2002: It's been a while since
our last update, but unfortunately this situation is not the result of sloth or hedonism. Then she went to an ear specialist who ran some tests and an MRI. She returned for a follow-up visit expecting to hear that she had an ear problem. The doctor went into a long rap (you know, the ‘I'm easing you into the bad news’ rap) and finally he pulls out the MRI’s which show that she has a skull base meningioma (brain tumor). Being an ear doc he didn't feel qualified to discuss specific treatments for meningiomas, so an appointment was made with a doctor that treats brain tumors. Needless to say, Selma was pretty shattered. Making matters worse, a friend of hers had recently had surgery for a brain tumor and required months of rehabilitation for facial paralysis. It was all a bit of an overload so she asked me "what would you do?" Of course, I was pretty wiped out by this news also, but fortunately I have the ability to go into Spock mode and start researching. Actually, when I don't have the answer to an important question, I automatically drop everything and start obsessively digging until I find the answer. I guess it's the way I deal with things. In this case, I was really starting at square one. If asked about obesity, I can give the answers chapter and verse; if asked about preventing disease, I'm on solid ground; but when asked about treating an existing brain tumor, I pretty much had to start at the beginning. When tragedy strikes, the first step is to make sure you have an accurate diagnosis. With the MRI, we had that covered. Then it's off to PubMed to see what treatment(s) look promising and have the best track record. The next step is to print out your list of references and go to the medical library to get the full text of the articles. (Procite is a lot of help with this part.) If there are a huge amount of on-topic articles, you might want to focus on the ‘review’ articles first. When you find a treatment that looks good, the next step is to find out what hospitals have the best track record with this procedure. This narrowed the list considerably, so I sent e-mails to the hospitals/doctor's asking very specific questions about how they would treat Selma's condition, etc. This is a remarkably effective filter -- a good doctor will take the time to answer your questions and not be scared off by an educated and assertive patient. Anything less is unacceptable. We eventually decided on a noninvasive treatment called Fractionated Stereotactic Radiosurgery (FSR). FSR has a higher "therapeutic ratio" than single shot treatments like the gamma knife. We chose FSR because of its well-documented ability to spare surrounding brain tissue and nerves. Johns Hopkins has an excellent track record with FSR and Dr. Williams was very good about answering my questions. Oh man, bummer. I just went to Johns Hopkins website to make the link and I found that just days after he finished Selma's treatment, Dr. Williams died of a heart attack while exercising. I am deeply saddened by this. From what we can tell at this time, the treatments went well and Selma seems to have avoided all of the problems that are rather common when brain tumors are removed with invasive surgery. In fact, I am happy to announce that Selma's Document Retrieval Service is once again up and running! And I'd like to thank everyone who bought supplements through our price comparison and helped keep us afloat while we were in limbo.
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It all started one day when
Selma had a really bad dizzy spell. By "really bad" I mean she could not stand
up or even move her head without being overwhelmed by dizziness. The emergency room gave
her some medicine and ran a bunch of tests, but they really didn't come up with anything.
In the past she had inner ear problems and that seemed like the best bet. Eventually, the
dizziness subsided and she was released.
