After several phone calls by hospital staff, and a couple of further scans, he was transferred to St. George's hospital, for a craniotomy to remove the solitary cerebellar metastasis. He was in hospital for about a week. In December 2010 he had an MRI scan which showed he was clear, and didn't require radiotherapy as there were no signs of systemic disease.
However the surgery has left him unstable on his feet, and he now requires a walking stick for stability around the house. He requires my support outside of the house, and gets very tired very quickly. Also initially after surgery he could only concentrate/listen to the TV or Radio for about half an hour before starting to feel tired and unwell. Over the next couple of months this increased to about an hour.
Towards the end of February 2011 David's speech started to become impossible to hear/understand and his stability started to decline, he was booked in for an MRI scan on 1st March, and I was not surprised to hear that the scan showed recurrence in the right cerebellum, David was disappointed to hear this. He was put on 4mg dexamethasone (steroids) which made him feel better and his mobility and speech improved.
It was decided that David would undergo 35Gy in five fractions of partial brain radiotherapy, this was carried out the week of the 11th - 15th April 2011, his steroids were increased to 8mg a day.
Following his radiotherapy, the steroids were reduced, as we had expected they would be, but as soon as we got to the second day off of alternate days David was unable to support his own weight, the headache returned with a vengeance and he didn't want to eat or drink because he didn't want to move from the bed.
I phoned the doctor at the hospital treating him with radiotherapy, who said it could just be the effects of the radiotherapy, as some people need a little longer than others before coming off the steroids. So under her guidance I increased David's dose to 4mg for 5 days then 2mg for 4 days and then alternate days for 7 days.
15 May 2011 is the first day off of the alternate days.
