long term effects of radiation

I am 50 yrs old & will complete my 30th radiation treatment tomorrow. I had one big blast 8 yrs ago on brain called gammaknife radiation. recently had brain tumor removed and followup treatments of radiaton & chemo (temodar/pills). only took temodar about a month into radiation. developed bad rash and stopped temodar. glad you are doing well and I am doing well also. would love to chat sometimes too.

Late Effects of Radiation
I had an ependymoma (malignant brain tumor)at age 4. I had surgery and radiation to the back of my brain and spine. I am 47 and last year first found out that all my difficulties
I have with work are due to late effects. I never heard of late effects until I joined a
survivor group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. I never had vision problems or hearing problems. My problems are cognitive. I can not muti task, have alot of
problems with organization, planning, time management,communications,problem solving, all
executive functions and social relations with others. My growth is stunted, I am quite short. My parents were afraid of using growth hormone. How tall are you? Did the growth hormone help? I have also had chronic deppression for as long as I could rember. I also
found out last year these low feelings are related to treatment. You may have skipped some of these feelings since you took growth hormone. Lack of growth hormone can lead to depression. I am not depressed after getting good treatment. What kind of work do you do? I have had problems holding jobs. Are you on disability because of your late effects? Please write, I would be happy to hear from you.

Matty

Matty said:

Late Effects
What problems does heat cause you?I have problems with heat in the summer. I can not tolerate heat and do not sweat like others. I don't know if it could be problems from treatment. I had radiation and surgery for my brain tumor.

Late Effect (heat)
Because the tumor destroyed my pituitary gland as my doctors put it my internal thermometer is off whack. So I get hot very easy.

james8220 said:

Hi I was diagnosed with a germinoma brain tumor. I had both radation and chemo. The radation destroyed my pituitary gland. Do to that I take desmopressin 3 times a day which I will have to take for the rest of my life. I also have problems with heat and am high tone deaf.

Same tumor as my son
Hi,

It's hard to find others who have been diagnosed with germinoma's! My son, who just turned 18, was diagnosed in 2007 with a germinoma on his pituitary gland. He lost all pituitary function. He takes ddavp, synthroid, cortef, testosterone, growth hormone. He doesn't have any hearing problems though. It's a challenge to keep up with his ever changing hormone levels. Good luck to you.

My husband finished his
My husband finished his temodar and radiation two weeks ago for a gbm IV found April 29th. He flew through it like Superman until the last two treatments. He started getting bad headaches like he had pre surgery. They come and go and aren't on a regular basis. They were supposed to have stopped by now but he is still getting them. The steroid isn't stopping them or taking the edge off. He doesn't have an mri until August 11th and doesn't want to contact the dr due to being treatment free for one more week. Has anyone else had headaches that didn't go away????

infoneeded said:

My husband finished his
My husband finished his temodar and radiation two weeks ago for a gbm IV found April 29th. He flew through it like Superman until the last two treatments. He started getting bad headaches like he had pre surgery. They come and go and aren't on a regular basis. They were supposed to have stopped by now but he is still getting them. The steroid isn't stopping them or taking the edge off. He doesn't have an mri until August 11th and doesn't want to contact the dr due to being treatment free for one more week. Has anyone else had headaches that didn't go away????

headaches
My son had terrible debiliting headaches before he had surgery to remove a tumor. He would throw up over and over and he couldn't see and he couldn't do anything because the pain was so bad. He said that he felt like he was dying....such a terrible time. It was right before he was diagnosed and right before he had brain surgery. He still had headaches after the tumor was removed, and headaches during radiation, and after radiation. They were pretty bad headaches, but not nearly as bad as the ones before surgery. I was so affected by his headaches...terrified that they meant something was wrong or growing back or whatever. But then the neurologist/oncologist's nurse told me that my son had basically had three traumas to his head...a tumor, a surgery, and the radiation, and that it takes the brain some time to heal.

My son was diagnosed and had surgery in May of 2009, and today he is still having headaches, but they are not as bad as they were. They lessened very slowly, but they did lessen, in frequency and in strength. Your husband and my son had different types of tumors, but I thought that our experience might give you some hope.

The steroids didn't help with his headaches at all. I wonder if they contributed to the headaches? My son took Vicodin and even Dilaudid a few times and that helped, especially the Dilaudid. But it was hard for him to function when he took such powerful pain medication. His oncologist sent him to a headache specialist and they tried different things, even acupuncture, but that didn't help. It just took time, I guess, to heal. Today his headaches are much more bearable and he has them less frequently.

I hope that your husband can get some relief from his headaches soon. Please forgive me if I am crossing a line here, but I do think that either you or he should call his doctor and see if there is any pain medicine or treatment that your husband can take that would give him some relief from his headaches. It's so demoralizing and and it makes one feel so much more discouraged when one is in consant, unrelenting pain. I'm so, so sorry that your husband and you are going through this.

Love and blessings,
Cindy

palmyrafan said:

Long Term Effects of Radiation
I had radiation therapy 15 years ago at the age of 34 for muliple mengiomas that had invaded areas they weren't supposed to grow in.

For the last 6 months I have been experiencing severe hearing loss, blurred vision, positional vertigo, etc. and we have finally started getting the answers. They are late side effects from the traditional radiation I had 15 years ago. My hypothalmus was almost destroyed which has also been affecting my thyroid and adrenal glands for the last 6 months. After 2 hospital stays I am finally on the correct medications (low dose prednisone and synthroid) that the docs say I will probably be on the rest of my life.

We have also been advised that the tumors are back, growing and in inoperable locations. They tell me they want me to sign up for radiation again. I do remember the headaches and everything else I experienced with radiation but the treatment was only for 6 weeks and after the treatment stopped the side-effects did ease pretty quickly. Headaches have been a way of life for me for the past 20 years and I have learned what works to help ease them.

By the way, we were warned 15 years ago that it is not uncommon for the effects of radiation to take years to show up.

Well, it took 22 years for
Well, it took 22 years for my husband's Whole Brain Radiation (WBR) of 1987 to manifest three inoperable AA tumors in August 2009, and now a GBM on the optic chiasm.

He has been on Synthroid, DDAVP, Cortef and Androgel since 1987, as his first germinoma was on the hypothalamus.

I'm hearing more and more and more late effects (some very serious) of radiation. At the time, my husband's germinoma had completely disappeared after two months of chemo. They insisted (to his mother) that they do WBR to make sure it was gone. We'll always wonder what would be if they hadn't done it, but there's no point in going there.

Hearing loss has presented itself, too, but nothing too drastic. His current doc thinks that was the Cisplatin they gave him in 1987. At 45, you don't expect hearing loss, but it's not unusual.

I pray there will come a day when treatments can become full-fledged cures, without late effects of another aspect of the disease with even more devastating effects.

All the best to each of you.

palmyrafan said:

Long Term Effects of Radiation
I had radiation therapy 15 years ago at the age of 34 for muliple mengiomas that had invaded areas they weren't supposed to grow in.

For the last 6 months I have been experiencing severe hearing loss, blurred vision, positional vertigo, etc. and we have finally started getting the answers. They are late side effects from the traditional radiation I had 15 years ago. My hypothalmus was almost destroyed which has also been affecting my thyroid and adrenal glands for the last 6 months. After 2 hospital stays I am finally on the correct medications (low dose prednisone and synthroid) that the docs say I will probably be on the rest of my life.

We have also been advised that the tumors are back, growing and in inoperable locations. They tell me they want me to sign up for radiation again. I do remember the headaches and everything else I experienced with radiation but the treatment was only for 6 weeks and after the treatment stopped the side-effects did ease pretty quickly. Headaches have been a way of life for me for the past 20 years and I have learned what works to help ease them.

By the way, we were warned 15 years ago that it is not uncommon for the effects of radiation to take years to show up.

what kind of radiotherapy
what kind of radiotherapy did you receive 15 years ago? so you had radiation to your brain twice?