I had a follow up appointment yesterday with my Neuro (Dr. Pieper) which showed no growth in my residual tumor and only, what he suspects to be "tiny bits of scar tissue"
This would be, let's see, 6 years since my first microsurgery (10/7/04), 4 years since my second surgery (2/1/06) and 3 years since my Gamma Knife (7/10/07) ... What started out as a "golf ball sized" AN has now been reduced to "tiny bits of scar tissue."
It's only now, roughly 6 years after being diagnosed, that I am truely feeling like I may be able to move on a bit. Sure I have my follow up appointments and it's always in the back of my head (no pun intended), but this once mentally, emotionally and physically debilitating tumor in my head has been been picked apart, pulled out, cut, zapped with lasers, you name it, and that uncomfortable feeling of having something alive in my head is finally passing by. I don't want to tempt any fate, but I finally feel like that SOB of a tumor is dead. Dead to me anyway.
It feels good.
For anyone currently dealing with it ... Take it from a guy who's run the full gammet of the AN experience, hang in there ... It gets better