stingray96191
Well-known member
When I Bought my First Stingray 5 almost 10 years ago i never thought that i would one day be a part of a community like this.. Where people respond at the drop of a hat to help someone they don't even know.
I thought i should write a few paragraphs to thank everyone, and give you all a bit of my backstory.
Around 3 years ago i was involved in a minor auto accident which left me with crippling back pain, i received treatment for all kinds of common back pain but got little to no relief from any common treatments. As time went on i learned to live with this pain and with the help of tons of ibuprofen i tried to love a normal life.
Well in January of 2009, I got what at first felt like a bad ice cream headache, which turned into intense sinus pressure then turned into a general numbness in my face,and was treated as a sinus infection.. After this infection didn't get better. The Drs reevaluated their opinion and told me they believed i had a vitamin B12 deficiency. They treated me with injections twice a week for a few months and still no results.
Eventually i was referred to a neurologist who did some scans and saw something he believed to be just some normal cells in my head that were not supposed to be there. In his eyes no big deal.. But as a precaution they did a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) To test for infections.
What they found was that my cranial pressure was very high.. Dangerously High.. And while the spinal fluid tested negative from any infections it was a dark orange color and had a very high protein count. (Spinal Fluid is supposed to be clear like water)
With these findings my neurologist determined that these cells in my head may not be as harmless as he had initially thought and sent me to see one of the top neurosurgeons in the world.
So i go in to my appointment with the Neurosurgeon who looks behind my eyes, and sees what he believes to be dangerously high intercranial pressure behind my eyes.. He sent me to an eye docter for a second opinion who agreed and they checked me into the emergency room to have a shunt placed in my brain.
The first picture is me right after i had the shunt placed.. they only shaved half of my head for some reason....
This was back on April 15th.. I missed a month of work at this time to recover from this surgery and during recovery the docters decided we would just watch and wait.
I guess they thought that relieving the pressure would be the extent of my treatment.. and to my surprise most of my back pain went away, and the feeling returned in my face.
Well in the next few weeks they elected to do full body ct/mri scans and found that there were clusters of tumors up and down my spine. And since these were easier to get to they decided to do a thorasic lamonectomy ( removal of a vertibrae ) so they could biopsy the tumor.
It took them almost a month to get the results back from the biopsy, but it was as bad as we expected. The good news about cancers of the brain is that they generally don't spread to other parts of the body. The bad news is that there is so little space in the brain/ spinal cord that as the tumors grow you lose control of your body/ experience intense nerve pain.
I'm still off work waiting to see how the treatment is going to work for me. What i have is almost unheard of in Adults... So the treatment is experimental to say the least. Most of the Chemo has to go directly into my spine as opposed to iv drip as is typical.
I hope this helps to understand what everyone here has been helping me with.
I appreciate EVERYTHING you have done, those that have donated, and those that just had kind words.
Special thanks to Sterling, Beaver, Lefty, and Beagles for all of their organization and help, and extra special thanks for everyone else. Please feel free to look me up if you are in Pittsburgh, and stop by.
You All Feel Like Family.
Thank You
Erin P
I thought i should write a few paragraphs to thank everyone, and give you all a bit of my backstory.
Around 3 years ago i was involved in a minor auto accident which left me with crippling back pain, i received treatment for all kinds of common back pain but got little to no relief from any common treatments. As time went on i learned to live with this pain and with the help of tons of ibuprofen i tried to love a normal life.
Well in January of 2009, I got what at first felt like a bad ice cream headache, which turned into intense sinus pressure then turned into a general numbness in my face,and was treated as a sinus infection.. After this infection didn't get better. The Drs reevaluated their opinion and told me they believed i had a vitamin B12 deficiency. They treated me with injections twice a week for a few months and still no results.
Eventually i was referred to a neurologist who did some scans and saw something he believed to be just some normal cells in my head that were not supposed to be there. In his eyes no big deal.. But as a precaution they did a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) To test for infections.
What they found was that my cranial pressure was very high.. Dangerously High.. And while the spinal fluid tested negative from any infections it was a dark orange color and had a very high protein count. (Spinal Fluid is supposed to be clear like water)
With these findings my neurologist determined that these cells in my head may not be as harmless as he had initially thought and sent me to see one of the top neurosurgeons in the world.
So i go in to my appointment with the Neurosurgeon who looks behind my eyes, and sees what he believes to be dangerously high intercranial pressure behind my eyes.. He sent me to an eye docter for a second opinion who agreed and they checked me into the emergency room to have a shunt placed in my brain.
The first picture is me right after i had the shunt placed.. they only shaved half of my head for some reason....
This was back on April 15th.. I missed a month of work at this time to recover from this surgery and during recovery the docters decided we would just watch and wait.
I guess they thought that relieving the pressure would be the extent of my treatment.. and to my surprise most of my back pain went away, and the feeling returned in my face.
Well in the next few weeks they elected to do full body ct/mri scans and found that there were clusters of tumors up and down my spine. And since these were easier to get to they decided to do a thorasic lamonectomy ( removal of a vertibrae ) so they could biopsy the tumor.
It took them almost a month to get the results back from the biopsy, but it was as bad as we expected. The good news about cancers of the brain is that they generally don't spread to other parts of the body. The bad news is that there is so little space in the brain/ spinal cord that as the tumors grow you lose control of your body/ experience intense nerve pain.
I'm still off work waiting to see how the treatment is going to work for me. What i have is almost unheard of in Adults... So the treatment is experimental to say the least. Most of the Chemo has to go directly into my spine as opposed to iv drip as is typical.
I hope this helps to understand what everyone here has been helping me with.
I appreciate EVERYTHING you have done, those that have donated, and those that just had kind words.
Special thanks to Sterling, Beaver, Lefty, and Beagles for all of their organization and help, and extra special thanks for everyone else. Please feel free to look me up if you are in Pittsburgh, and stop by.
You All Feel Like Family.
Thank You
Erin P
