And now the good news, in short/summary form...
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From: John Wolford
Sent: March 11, 2005 5:27 PM
Subject: Quick Update
Everyone,
We had our appointment with the neurosurgeon this morning to get the pathology results. Relatively speaking, the news is GOOD. It is a slow-growing, non-aggressive malignant tumour.
I've told you about the four Grades I-IV assigned to astrocytoma tumours. It was suspected by the doctors that my tumour was one of these. It turns out that it is not an astrocytoma, it is instead an oligodendroglioma (OGD), which is another type of tumour. OGD only come in two grades, low or high. I'm very happy to be able to tell you that it is a low-grade OGD.
It is still unknown whether or not I will need - maybe a better way to put it is whether I can use, chemotherapy. It will be about a month before we know if the tumour is chemo-sensitive. If it is then we can do follow-up chemotherapy to further reduce the volume of the tumour. Otherwise we will look at alternatives: radiation therapy or delaying treatment altogether.
It's important to realize that there are still no guarantees - in fact there are none for anyone, to be sure. And we still have some unanswered questions, no real roadmap, etc. Nevertheless, I am very pleased to be able to give you this update, very grateful.
I don't want to sound like I keep repeating myself but I can't stop myself - thank you all for your continued support, your well-wishes. They are invaluable for me, to be sure.
Many thanks,
John
