Karen's battle with illness 1
​disease discovery

November 13, 2004, eldest daughterKarenwas born. She is our only daughter.

I never got sick from infancy to childhood.

I was a child who never caught a cold.

He had a friendly personality and was a child full of curiosity.

 

The doctor said that if it was malignant, he would only have a year to live.

 

But the disease came suddenly.
 

One day, while playing at the children's center, he banged his head against the wall, cried a lot, and started vomiting, so we took an X-ray at a local hospital just to be sure.
 

They found ``acupressure marks'' where the skull was pressing on the surface of the brain.

There may be a problem with bone growth, so at the doctor's recommendation, we went to the prefectural children's hospital and had an MRI scan, which revealed that there was a tumor inside the brainstem, separate from the initial disease. .
 

The doctor said, ``It might be a brainstem glioma.If it's a malignant tumor, you have a year to live, and the only treatment is radiation.''
 

I was stunned because I couldn't find a balance between the daughter's lively state and what she was saying.

 

Go for a second opinion.

 

I immediately searched online for a doctor who was knowledgeable about pediatric brain tumors, and for a second opinion, I went to a university hospital, and the doctor there's opinion was...
 

They said, ``He's currently doing well, so let's keep an eye on him for a while. It might not be a malignant tumor.''

 

After that, Karen enters kindergarten and spends a fun year with friends who are irreplaceable in her life.

If I had received radiation treatment right away, I might not have survived this past year.

 

disease develops.

 

However, the illness was not easy.
 

When he was moving up from a junior year to a senior year, he developed an illness, became unsteady when walking, and suffered from headaches and nausea.
 

I visited the hospital for the first time in a year, and was immediately admitted and diagnosed.As a result, the tumor was found to have grown, and I was also suffering from ``hydrocephalus,'' which causes pressure on the brain by blocking the passage of cerebral bone marrow fluid that flows through the brain. Ta.

The doctor discussed future treatment plans.
 

"First, we perform surgery for hydrocephalus to drain the water that has accumulated in the head. After that, we begin treatment for the tumor, but since there have been no symptoms for a year, there is a possibility that it is an atypical brainstem glioma. I can't deny it. Radiation exposure to young children carries risks such as a decline in intelligence. I would like to try chemotherapy first..."

 

You may be wondering why I don't have surgery.

Treatment for brain tumors usually involves surgical removal of the tumor. However, pediatric brainstem gliomas cannot be removed because they are sticky, glue-like tumors that form inside the brainstem, where many nerves that are important for life pass through.
 

Therefore, the only standard treatment for childhood brainstem gliomas is radiation. Although it is denied worldwide that chemotherapy, or anticancer drugs, is effective, this is a suggestion made by the attending physician in consideration of the atypical possibility.
 

Possibility... This is because the diagnosis of this disease is based on MRI images, and the diagnosis after removing a part of the sample surgically and performing pathological examination, as with normal cancer, is This is not generally done for the reasons stated above. In other words, there is a ``possibility'' of another disease.

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