Sunday, March 30, 2014

Where is this new Tumor?

Terry called me this morning to tell me where this new tumor is located. She had called me Friday from her cell phone while I was at work and I got it wrong. It's not the stelium, it's the splenium! You know where that is, right? It's the back section of the corpus callosum, and it does look like a butterfly. Steve's small, 7 mm, tumor is located on the left lobe of the splenium, significantly far away from the first tumor. Steve's first, big tumor, was lower in the left parietal lobe near the speech area of the brain. This new one is up and to the right from there. What does a splenium do? What harm can it do to Steve? I've been trying to sort that out. As nearly as I can tell:

The diverse structural properties of the splenial fibers across brain areas suggest that they are involved in a variety of functions, while there are considerable variations between subjects, it implies a contribution of the splenium to plastic changes in the course of human development.  One such function is figure-ground segregation, which refers to the ability of the visual system to segment images of the external world into objects and background. 

Another source says, if you have a stroke which takes out the Whole splenium (a much bigger area than would affect Steve):
The resulting deficit will be pure alexia - i.e., the patient can write but cannot read (even what they have just written). Isn't that a crazy thought?

Last night, Steve took an anti-nausea pill 30 minutes before his 350mg Temodar chemotherapy pill, along with medicine for constipation prevention. So far he is feeling fine this morning. If we remember back to his prior experience with chemotherapy, usually the 3rd week was the worst out of every cycle when he had the most fatigue or nausea. We anticipate that will be the case this time, too.

Their dinner last night was wonderful and they said it was really great to see their friends.

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