In his latest book, “A Doctor’s Story,” neurosurgeon and neuroscientist Dr. Mark E. Garlow discusses the benefits of listening to your body. He wrote that if you listen to your body, you can hear your body’s needs and wants. I felt it too, especially when I first had my surgery. I felt like my body needed to be listened to.
This was especially true during my first 6 months of acoustic neuroma surgery. The first six months was the most challenging part of my life, and I can’t say I’d have it any other way. The surgery was very nerve-racking. The only thing I was worried about was what would happen if I had to have an electrical stimulation in the future. But I’m glad I did it. I feel like I have a new lease on life.
In the future, the surgery is not being performed on you. You will still be connected to your neurosurgeon and/or neurophysiologist. You will, however, have to take a variety of medications for the rest of your life.
This is a very controversial subject. I’m here to say that I am 100% on the same page with other people who are on this issue. I understand and support the idea that neurosurgery should have a place in the medical community. I am, however, vehemently against the use of surgery to remove parts of the nervous system. I was at my surgeon’s office yesterday and they had a large plastic surgeon talk to me about this very topic.
Well, the nerve damage caused by a brain tumor is not something that can be cured by surgery. That is why I am totally against it. The only thing that could be cured by surgery would be the tumor itself, which would have to be removed, and that would never be an option for most neurosurgeons.
There are many neurosurgical techniques that can relieve the pain of a brain tumor, but surgery is the most effective way to remove the tissue that caused the pain. The best treatment is radiation to relieve the tumor, which is not always available and can cause serious damage to other parts of the brain. At least with an acoustic neuroma, if it’s not too far gone, the tumor can be removed or reduced in size, and the pain can be relieved.
As far as treatment, the surgeon, neurosurgeon, and oncologist can work together to create a plan to reduce pain and improve the situation for the patient. The oncologist will be the doctor that wants to remove the tumor, while the surgeon will be the one who wants to keep it in place or shrink it.
With acoustic neuromas, this surgery can be completed pretty quickly with a few simple steps. First, the patient should get a CT scan to see if there is any growth (or other problems) that might require surgery. Then another CT scan, and another to see if the tumor is shrinking. If the tumor is shrinking, the surgeon will remove it.
This sounds like a lot of work, but it is much easier said than done because of the number of tumors that grow and stop shrinking. Of course, this is often the case with patients that have had acoustic neuromas. The process of removing the tumor can be difficult and difficult to repeat, and the surgeon may have to go back and remove growths from other nerves as well. You can avoid some of this by having surgery performed by a team of plastic and neurosurgeons.
But what happens when that team is a group of doctors working in a hospital surrounded by other doctors, nurses, and technicians? The group of doctors may do a lot of surgery, but it doesn’t make sense to them that people will be working on the same job while they are all busy with the surgery. They may be more interested in their work than in the patients.