sister's brain mets

[Celina]

My sister is back from her two-week vacation with family. She said that she felt quite good, especially being off chemo for the last 3 and a half weeks. When talking to her today, I noticed that her speech was slightly slowed and slurred...similar to the way it sounded prior to her brain mets diagnosis. She did tell me that again her vision has gotten worse. She finished tests a month ago trying to determine the cause of the her sight deterioration, but they said that there had been no changes to her existing lesions and no new ones that could cause this. She sees onc. on Thursday and I'm quite certain that he will schedule another scan. I'm going to be holding my breath because, though I try to remain positive, I fear the worse.Just when her liver and bones start to show improvement, we have to worry about the brain mets. Could this be a result of WBR (though she only had 5 treatments)? Oh my..what a roller coaster ride this is!!!

[Lisa]

Since my WBR, which ended in Sept. I've been very fuzzy brained. No slurred speech, but definite vision changes.

I assume your sisiter gets brain MRIs rather than CTs, since MRIs are more accurate for the brain. As for me, whenever I get a small headache now, I worry. I'm anxious for another scan even though it hasn't been 3 months, because if there IS any brain met growth, I want to make sure we can take care of it with Cyberknife.

I know how frustrated she and you are. I went from 9 months of chemo for liver/bone mets almost directly to brain mets and only a gap of several weeks before stomach lymph nodes showed up. Although the brain doesn't react to chemo, the body does and many of us are living through consecutive recurrences. And consecutive chemos.

Keep us posted.

Love and light,

Lisa

[*_Annemarie_*]

I have had brain mets and after radiation to the brain I did experience some temporary speech problems (not noticeable to others). I would stutter more, trip over my words, could not think of a word, short term memory loss but this all improves over time. My problems were not apparent to anyone other than my mother and husband. I attribute it to the RT

[StephN]

Hi Celina -
Slurry speech is not the same as just hesitating or "tripping over words." This can be a major sign that something else is wrong. This is also a motor problem and/or speech center problem.
I hope she had a good checkup today and they took an MRI for her.

[Celina]

Yes, Steph. We realized that it could be something more serious, especially when doc. said that he thought she may have had a stroke..she couldn't speak for 15 min. We are still waiting for the MRI..hoping it will be Monday or Tues.