Hello my fellow GBM cancer patients & caregivers this my 1st post to this blog & hopefully I can make it a good one. Let me be perfectly clear I am so glad to have joined this Forum & allow me to make a special acknowledgement to BranR1948 who is a frequent participant and was diagnosed with GBM 4 during March of 2016. I find his words of encouragement to especially uplifting.
So I 1st noticed symptoms of this terrifying disease during July 2017. It all began during a drive home after dining from my favorite Italian restaurant where it was dark & I had a few drinks along with a full meal. I was going down a windy road and drove my car off the right shoulder (we drive opposite ways here in the States) and busted the sidewall in 3 areas and the tire went flat. My wife & favorite mother in-law (anyone care to guess why?) were in the car with me. All I could think is how can I get an 89 year old woman home to my house w/o ruining the wheel so I decided to drive slowly on the flat for approximately 6 miles & reached my destination.
The next day I swapped the tire for a spare and if anyone has changed a tire manually knows it takes a modicum of strength to accomplish. And it was off to the dealer to replace the tire with a matching one and I chalked that up to one very expensive night out,
A couple of weeks later while bringing my mother in-law back from the Dentist I drove off the right side of the road & onto the shoulder, but this time we suffered no repercussions other then my mother in-law commented “boy you’re tough on a car.” Little did I know what was about to come.
Flash forward to August and my symptoms worsened considerably. I had to get up frequently at night to use the bathroom and still do to this day. And felt increasingly disoriented accompanied by weakness in my right-side, which I attributed to a pinched nerve in my neck.
The event that triggered a call to my primary care physician was on August 1st or 2nd while mowing my lawn I happened to seize in the garage where everything went bright and I was seeing double vision and shaking uncontrollably and had to grab onto a metal shelving unit so as not to fall down. Once the seizure began it stopped, but I knew given my symptoms I remember thinking that something isn’t right and decided to make an appointment with my primary doctor on August 4th. She has been caring for our family for a number of years and is familiar with my personality, which tends to be a verbose jokester/kidder if you will.
So after looking and speaking with me she noticed my confusion & sent me to AMCH Albany Medical Center Hospital under a stroke protocol where I was admitted to the ER. After they performed a CT Scan the diagnosis was I had brain lesions that were confirmed to be Gliobastoma MF on August 7th based on the results from an MRI.
Oh well, I get up early these days and it is 6:15 am EDT. This is all for now, but still remains a lot more to come. Thanks for your patience and I will appreciate any thoughts or comments you are willing to provide.
