Oh wow. I thought I had an email alert set to notify me if my initial post received any responses. Apparently not. Thanks everyone, for the encouragement and advice! And sorry for my inattention to my own post.
Eve: I did not, at first, consider watchful waiting. But the more research about treatment I do, the more sensible that course of action sounds. To be fair, my doctors did say waiting would be viable--but they seemed much more enthusiastic about active treatment options. My rationale vis-à-vis treatment HAD been: the sooner it is treated, the more likely I will be to preserve hearing. The more I read, however, the more I am thinking that hearing preservation is an unrealistic expectation, no matter what treatment I opt for. (Not that hearing loss is guaranteed, I understand--but let's be honest: everything I am reading seems to indicate that long term ("long term" being the often missing or misleading variable in the statistical data) hearing preservation is a coin flip at best, whether treatment is accomplished via radiation or surgery.) So, long story short, watchful waiting IS now a very serious consideration for me.
Bonnie: I'm sorry to hear that you are also facing tough treatment choices. There is so much information to try take in--and then to rectify against all the other information we have taken in. It seems like there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to treatment research. I'm getting the feeling that I now possess most of the information I need to make a decision, and yet I do not feel very close to making a decision. One thing my doctors did stress (for me anyway--I know this advice doesn't apply to everyone) is that there is plenty of time to make a decision. There is no reason to rush into anything. I almost wish my tumor had some feature (size, location, shape) that would limit my treatment options--or at least nudge me in the direction of a logical treatment plan. But alas, the world is my oyster, treatment-wise! (Not really funny, I know. I fully appreciate that it is a lucky position to be in.)
Right now I have very few symptoms. (Right now, actually, none.) I have had, over the last 3 years, 5 bouts of partial hearing loss. Hearing has returned each time with a course of steroids. This recurrent hearing loss is the symptom that spurred my GP to order the MRI. I have occasional tingly facial sensations and, rarely, tongue numbness. I also sometimes have a symptom that, pre-diagnosis, I called "severe brain fog." Like brain-fog on steroids. Brain-fog bordering on full-blown confusion. I am beginning to understand that this is probably my vestibular system suffering a sudden change. I do not feel dizzy, per-se, but it does feel like my brain is receiving bad or conflicting sensory input data, and really struggling to process it all. (Has anyone else reading this had such severe "brain fog" symptoms?)
Thanks again for the support and advice. This forum is a real life-saver.
