Nov 29, 2016 at 12:42 pm

Cancer Life Changing

Update posted by Lorencia Van Der Westhuizen

Cancer Life Changing

Our journey with Cancer started March 2016

A week after an mri was done on my husband that showed a big mass on his brain.

On 22 March we had to rush him to Krugersdorp Netcare Hospital after he started having severe headaches and his head started to swell,after how many hours of trying to get hold off the doctor he arrived and said John must have a emergency operation the next day as the mass is causing pressure on his brain.

The next afternoon he went in for the operation and they were able to remove about 80% off the mass,he was in ICU for a few days then moved to the normal ward where he got fisio etc as he has lost some of his function on the left side of his body leg and arm(his arm has recovered well but his still having trouble with his leg,he is walking everything)After a week in hospital he was discharge and doing well.

A week or so went by and we had to go see the Neurosurgeon for the Biopsy report from the surgery and that's were we got the news,it was a CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM PRIMITIVE NEUROECTODURMAL TUMOR GRADE 4 (PINEOBLASTOMA CANCER) and that it was not good news as the doctor said survival rate for that type of cancer is around 4 months.

Then came making the choice of going for chemotherapy and radiation that would have been for a month straight.

We decided not to do it as the side effect of radiation and chemo to the brain is far to bad to name just a few-

blindness

hearing loss

paralyzed and so much more

(and to make things worse the type of cancer is children's cancer the oncologist here have never worked with this type of cancer in a adult so they wanted to give him the same treatment they would give a child after they had to do research about this type of cancer)

So we made the choice we are not going to do the treatment as they cant guarantee if it will even work.

We went home and started with vitamins eating healthier etc and it went great for the passed few months until 2 weeks ago 14 November when we went for another mri scan that showed the big mass was back,so we went to our neurosurgeon here and he said we had to drain the tumor as its putting pressure on his brain again so on 15 November he went into surgery again,the doctor drained about 40ml from the tumor.

They are still trying to push us to go for chemo and radiation but we are still against it as they still want to do the exact same treatment and cant guarantee that it would even help a bit.

And in the first place they only gave him 4 months at most and we are past 8 months,its just the fluid that the tumor makes that keeps putting pressure on his brain not the tumor self.

We heard about a new type of treatment that could help but we don't have the finances as you can imagine what the cost of all this was we have a hospital plan but that doesn't help with all the extra doctor cost petrol etc that comes with this.

The treatments cost is R48 000.00 that's without petrol ,food ,housing for 2 months as we are located in Klerksdorp and the treatment center is in George(Cape Town) 1059 km from us.

We are a one income family and we have a 4 year old daughter,all of this is putting a heavy strain on our finances and we can barely pull thru each month as it is.

So we are asking anyone that is willing to help with any donations big or small will help a lot.

Thank you to each and everyone that took the time to read thru our Life Changing Cancer story.

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