Hi, Thanks for your words of encouragement and support. His first surgery was done by a young neurosurgeon who probably didn't have a lot of experiene with pit tumors. The tumor was very large at the time; 4.3 cm and was impeding his vision in his right eye, so, it was an emergency debulking surgery. The second surgery was done by Dr. Jho using the minimally invasive endoscopic technique, but if you don't get all the cells then it can grow back especially if its an aggressive type tumor, so he had another surgery by Dr. Jho, but this time it was a craniotomy and left him with double vision in his right eye. He also had "some" gamma-knife surgery but it was a "minimal" dose because the tumor was touching the optic nerve. By the time he had his 4th surgery, they discovered the tumor stained positive for growth hormone (acromegaly), so we tried the sandostatin injections for 2 months, but they increase his sugar levels and the endocrinologist thought it probably wasn't doing him any good anyways so we discontinued the sandostatin. The 4th surgery was done by Dr. White of Barrow Neurological Institute and he came through fine, but this last surgery had complications involving several small strokes which have left him with cognitive deficits, memory, paralysis in the right eye and the lid is 90% shut, and limited vision in the left eye (the good one) from the strokes. I'm told the diabetes and hypertension were probably factors for the strokes which happened during surgery. He's been in a rehab facility now for 3 months and is making some improvements, but its probably going to take a long time for him to recover, and I don't know how much he can regain of all his faculties. I've been relentlessly praying for some kind of miracle for him. Sincerely, Debbie |
