how can you help someone witha brain tumor

there are lots of ways to help someone or the families if they have a brain tumor.
check this audio out, it is from ww.dadsbraintumor.com

how to help

brain tumor symptoms audio

this is an audio clip about dad's brain tumor symptoms that we have just added to the dadsbraintumor.com website.
I hope the link works OK.

MP3 Dads brain tumor symptoms

Brain Tumor Symptoms

What to look out for with brain tumor symptoms, I wish we knew ages ago.

Some of the things that appeared could have easily been put down to old age, and they appeared to be quite unrelated.

A lot of my dad's brain tumor symptoms were quite mild and really he had had for years.
Things like shaking of the hands, depth perception, left eye problems.

It's funny (not ha ha funny but strange funny) my mum always had an inkling that something was wrong. Dad had done some odd things for some time. Nothing really out there. Just little things that were a bit odd and unusual. This all played on her a bit and all the family didn't really think too much of it. But there were all brain tumor symptoms, just very mild. The brain tumor symptoms didn't become bad until things went down hill very very fast.

I look back now and still think the biggest brain tumor symptom that we should have picked up on was the problem solving.

And you know what the second biggest brain tumor symptom was. He went to the optometrist to get his eyes checked. The optometrist said that dad had had a mild stroke. his peripheral vision in the left eye was terrible. Dad didn't think he had had a stroke at any stage. but the optometrist kept on about it. Little did we know then that was a brain tumor symptom. The optometrist had found it by accident when testing vision. Funny how these little things are easy to see now we know what brain tumor symptoms are.

If you suspect something, get it checked sooner rater than later. Time matters.

brain tumor symptoms and steroids

Funny I often wonder if my dad's brain tumor symptoms are related to the dexamethasone or the tumor itself.

I know these drugs help relieve the brain tumor symptoms, but sometimes I wonder what the cost is.

It is the devil or the deep blue sea really. In our case you take the dex while under treatment then continue on. once dad stopped taking the dexmeth he brain tumor symptoms went wild. We could see daily changes the second he stopped the dex. That was a scary time in our lives.

We were told, now I will try to repeat this.
The dex stops swelling of the brain, since dad had had 2 brain surgery operations in a matter of a week that was a concern.
The dex also has the side effect of slowing the tumor down. this combination will often see a reduction in brain tumor symptoms.
And it did in our case.
However once you come off dex , and need to go back on it, it is much less effective.

There really are lots of tough questions to make.


News 8 Austin | 24 Hour Local News | HEADLINES | Better brain tumor help

For thousands of patients with brain tumors, managing the side effects of treatment is half the battle. Many patients must take steroids, like dexamethasone, to reduce the swelling in their brains. Without these potent drugs, the swelling around the tumor can cause neurological problems.

"The swelling can sometimes cause a much worse deficit than the tumor does by itself. Steroids work very well at suppressing the swelling, in general, but the problem is, over time, steroids can carry a lot of side effects," Dr. Nick Avgeropoulos said.

Some of those side effects include
• Insomnia
• Psychosis
• Blood pressure and blood sugar irregularities
• Weight gain
• Muscle weakness

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Brain Tumor Symptoms and Brain Position

The difference of brain tumor symptoms when they are in different parts of the brain. Stands to reason when we know that different parts of the brain control different things. Also you need to watch out for personality changes with brain tumors, that is the scariest thing when someone's personality changes.

clipped from www.cancerbackup.org.uk Frontal lobe tumours - Changes in personality and intellect. Unco-ordinated walking or weakness of one side of the body. Loss of smell, occasional speech difficulties. Parietal lobe - Difficulty in speaking or understanding words. Problems with writing or reading. Difficulty in co-ordinating certain movements. Difficulty finding your way around. Difficulty with numbers (doing simple calculations) Occipital lobe - Loss of vision on one side. Temporal lobe - Fits may cause strange sensations: a feeling of fear or intense familiarity (dé jà vu), strange smells or blackouts. Speech difficulties and memory problems. Cerebellum - Lack of co-ordination which affects walking and speech (dysarthria), unsteadiness, flickering involuntary movement of the eyes (nystagmus). Vomiting and neck stiffness. Brain stem - Unsteadiness and an unco-ordinated walk. Facial weakness, a one-sided smile or drooping eyelid. Double vision.

Brain Tumor Symptoms

Interesting and it depends on where the brain tumor is, but the maths symptom is something worth considering

clipped from www.dadsbraintumor.com depth perception ( a bit scary when he was driving) Shaking of the left hand an inability to process simple maths problems dragging of the left leg a problem with his right eye, focus and peripheral vision and in the end, no balance. I would like to draw your attention  to the Maths Problem,  I have since heard of two other people that had a brain tumor.  Their tumors were in different parts of the brain.  However they both had the same issues with simple problem solving.  This stands out to us now as about 12 months before my Dad was diagnosed he was covering a deck.  The deck was a rectangle and he could not figure out how to calculate the area of shade cloth he would need.  He KNEW he should be able to do it, but just could not figure out HOW to do it.   (length by breadth)  This from a person that had never had any issues with this type of problem in the past.  We put it down to getting old.  but now we know why.

video library

this is a great site with heaps and heaps of video information on brain tumors.

I really suggest you get to this site and have a look.

there is videos on treatment, surviving, nutrition, experimental treatments etc.



Rainbow Memorial Video Library

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