GBM4 - The journey with my Dad

  • End of the road - Dad passed away 7th October

    Well this is my last blog post I think, and its taken a while to work up the energy to write it. 

    While Dad was in the home he had a couple of big seizures. These were dealt with at the home with use of Medazolam, meaning he didn't have to go to hospital, despite them being biggies. He then got shingles. This knocked him out a few days and just showed how compromised his immune system was. 

    On the 28th September he…

  • Brain tumour - heading towards end of life

    I've just re-read my post from July. I can't believe that it was only two months ago as it feels like a lifetime has passed already.

    When Dad finally got his MRI at Oldham, they decided in conjunction with the neuro team at Salford that he did have stroke. They moved him to the stroke unit at Bury, ironically where he started this whole journey. Here they decided that no more treatment was available to him other…

  • This will be a long one... the last 9 months

    So. I didn't realise it had been 9 months since my last post. How time flies....

    Dad had a routine scan that seemed to show progression of the tumour in January. Surgery was recommended to be followed by a new chemo regime.

    He had a surgery on the Friday, after which he was happy but had vertigo. A scan revealed that they hadn't got the tumour that they wanted, so they operated again on the Monday. After that he was…

  • 12 months on and stable

    Well the one year anniversary and Dad is doing ok.

    We were getting to a stage where the steroids were making him retain water awfully so we staged a reduction to get him off them. Unfortunately after a couple of days off it was apparent that he wasn't going to cope without. He couldn't string a sentence together, was very lethargic and flu like, generally disinterested in whats going on, so we're back to a nice small…

  • Feeling very apprehensive...scan results tomorrow hopefully

    So, I've not really been on here at all for a month. Does it sound harsh or uncaring to say I'm all cancer'd out? Probably a bit I guess. People who were on the boards when I first started reading them died. So awful and heartbreaking, and I didn't really like the glimpse into the future that it gave. 

    Dad got through the final round pretty much unscathed. I joked at the start that we'd have it licked…