Hi Calimama -
Great city - Toronto! One of the cleanest and most beautiful cities in North America.
In terms of the speed of treatment, part of that is my own desire to get this done with and get on with life. And, part of it is that the booger is pressing into my cerebellum and the facial nerve is stretched across the top of it. No one has recommended waiting, and even the GK guy said that radiation really wasn't a good option for me. What I think I've learned is that it is as much the configuration and exact location as the size that directs treatment.
I was really, really lucky to be able to get into see two treatment teams within two weeks of diagnosis. In addition, I sent my MRI CD to House Ear Clinic in LA and they got back to me within 24 hours. All of this, along with a pretty consistent opinion that translab was the way to go, made my decision fairly easy.
As for other symptoms - none, really. I have had some occasional balance issues in the last year (which I incorrectly attributed to getting a little older and not doing my yoga as consistently as I should!) Other that that, my first indication that something was amiss was about 6 or so months ago when I started to become aware of decreased hearing in my right ear. Of course, I assumed it was just aging and genetics (my dad went suddenly deaf about 35 years ago) and put off the ENT visit until March. Don't think it would have made a lot of difference if I went sooner - and can't worry about it anyway at this point.
What you've probably gathered from reading a lot of the posts on this forum is that a sense of humor is really important. If also helps to "de-scare" this thing we've all got. It's a bump in the road of life - not the end of life!
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk further. I don't have a lot of answers, but I do have a lot of optimism (okay, and sometimes a fair amount of fear!)
Debbi (and Ethel - but not for long!!)
