[4Arianna]

Thank you all for the responses which confirmed my sense that something was not right about my mother's symptoms. I took her for an MRI two days after I first posted about how sick she was. It turns out that she developed hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and had to undergo surgery to install an AV shunt. She now feels better, is out of the hospital and in rehab where she will remain for several weeks receiving physical therapy. According to the docs, hydrocephalus is caused by a number of things and in my mom's case they believe it to be a rare complication of radiosurgery combined with the intense edema she experienced from taking decadron. Apparently when the blood-brain barrier is disrupted by radiosurgery, there is the potential for affecting the brain's ability to drain fluids and this is what happened to my mother. I just wish that she had been diagnosed properly before her symptoms became so bad. For weeks I had been taking her for tests and consults with her onc, her neuro onc and the neurology director of the hospital, and was told that her symptoms were either from the tumors, or the decadron, or the radiosurgery or the chemo. That is what led me to post on this board because it just did not seem right that so many women here who have brain mets are not going through the kinds of things she experienced. It wasn't until she became very sick and her symptoms became too severe to be any of those things that the hydrocephalus was discovered. In any case she is recovering and hopefully will be home soon. Strength, courage and best wishes to you all!