ADDF clinical research!!

[Lunacie]

So they're gonna poke around inside your head and take out all that wet sawdust, eh?

That's what my dad and bro used to tell me was inside my head. Guess they could tell I was different long before ADHD was very well known.

If this helps you, I can see a whole bunch of us asking for brain scans to see if surgery will help us too.

(((Amtram)))

[meadd823]

I can't wait to see the films, and whatever neurosurgeon I see is probably going to want to treat me really quickly so he doesn't have to put up with all my questions. Heh. I really am interested in seeing if I notice any cognitive or emotional changes after surgery, and the only thing that I'm worried about is paying for it. Stoopid insurance company.

Your insurance doesn't cover tumors, bones or those that grow in the brain - What is the sense of having insurance if they don't pay for things when you need them.

My luck the tumor would be the only working part of my brain and removing it would probably decrease my IQ but that is me - Any way I agree it will be interesting to see if removing your tumor has any effect on your ADHD symptoms.

[Rebelyell]

I'll keep you in my prayers nd thoughts,yeh isnt tht the truth nj is cancer alley,that word still scares me being I lost both folks from it.

[Drewbacca]

Wishing you the best and a quick recovery!

[Peripheral]

Amtram,

Don't be silly you can't cure ADHD.

Hope your OK.

Love Consider

[Dizfriz]

Amtram,

Keep us in touch with this, we care.

Dizfriz

[MentalNomad]

Originally Posted by Geronimoo Back-Y-Rita

Amtram,

Don't be silly you can't cure ADHD.

Hope your OK.

Love Consider

But, you can cure medical mimics of ADHD, potentially.

[mctavish23]

Amtram,

Ditto on the Hugs and Best Wishes Stuff.

Will be thinking of you and putting you in my prayers.

tc

mctavish23

(Robert)

[Luvmybully]

Wow Amtram. Well that's a pretty crappy surprise to get from a Dr visit.

Will be thinking of you and praying for you too.

[Amtram]

OK, I'm back from a weeklong tour of potential colleges for DD#2 and no real internet access, so here's some updates. . .

The doctor my GP recommended who is actually on my plan has not gotten back to me after two phone calls, so the timeline for any treatment is. . .nonexistent. We'll be working on that. I may see if I can harass my insurance company enough to let me get treated by the same neurosurgeon who treated the same thing in my mother. . .in Philadelphia. I'm not hanging all my hopes on that.

The typical presentation of intraosseous meningioma does not involve the dura (the membrane that covers and protects the surface of the brain) but the treatment often includes removal of a portion of the dura and grafting from another area to close the opening.

Depending on the type of tumor and its size, the area of the skull that is removed can be repaired with grafted bone, or may need metal plate or mesh. If this is the case, I am so going to take airplane trips once I have my get-out-of-TSA-free card! I haven't seen my own films, so I have no idea how extensive this thing has become.

Now, let me tell you a few of the things I've noticed, and why in retrospect I think they may be results of the pressure the tumor is causing. A little background as to why I didn't pay attention to them in the first place. . .First of all, some of them resemble ADD-like symptoms, and I dismissed them as a worsening of my ADD due to age/stress/medication. Secondly, I was on Cymbalta for my depression several years ago, and experienced similar mental dysfunction after a long period of using it, and attributed the cognitive difficulties to an earlier onset of the same result because I was taking it again for my depression. I have been off Cymbalta for almost two months now, and there has been no remission of these symptoms, so I'm thinkin' it's the tumor. . .

The thing that bothered me first was the tinnitus. I've always had it, usually didn't notice it. Slowly but surely, it has increased in volume and risen in pitch in my left ear. I'm not certain of the exact location of the tumor, but there is a slight swelling directly above and slightly to the front of my left ear that's unrelated to the area where I hit my head. My right ear is unaffected. If there is any tinnitus in my right, I don't notice it because it's overwhelmed by the noise in my left ear.

Headaches have been a constant with me. I'm a walking barometer. Incoming precipitation almost always triggers a pain in my sinuses. Over the last several months, despite drought in my area, I've been getting headaches more frequently, and they've been less responsive to painkillers. I'm taking a prescription level dose of naproxen to ease the pain in my arthritic shoulder, but the headaches continue to nag.

Now for the cognitive stuff. The biggie has been losing words. I mean, REALLY losing words. This was a difficulty that I had experienced with my earlier use of Cymbalta. Normally, when I'm lost at finding a word, it's been because so many other words are popping into my head vying for attention, and I've had to try to sort out which is the one I need. This has not been the case lately. They just haven’t been there. I stop in the middle of the sentence, and there’s just a blank. Nada. The complete silence is disconcerting. Once I took notice of this after realizing that stopping Cymbalta hadn’t made this go away, I realized that my mind is a lot quieter than usual, and not in a good way. (I still ruminate. . .) Turns out that expressive and/or responsive aphasia is a common symptom in meningiomas.

That makes sense if you think about it. . .the areas of the brain that control various aspects of communication and language comprehension are small and close to the center of the brain. Pressure from any area of the cerebrum could compress these areas and reduce your ability to understand or respond to written or spoken language, or lose syntactic fluency, or disable the connection between words and objects. Being at a loss for words is an alien experience for me, and very disconcerting.

I’ve always been a very good typist. In fact, when I was Recording Secretary for the Marching Band, I took minutes for all the meetings on my netbook, and had very few typing errors that needed correction. Over the last several months, my fingers have been going in the wrong places more and more frequently. I’m still moving them just as fast, but I think I’m getting a callus from the backspace key. Between losing my train of thought or searching for a word and hitting the wrong letters as I type, this is taking a lot longer than usual.

What I just discovered from taking notes on the college tour is that my already atrocious handwriting has taken a major hit as well. Looking at samples of what I wrote down this week and what I wrote several months ago, I see a striking difference between them. I had many WT(H) moments looking down at the paper, because there were not only a lot of wrong and malformed letters, but also things that were not even letters at all.

More to come later. . .now I need another cup of coffee!

[ginniebean]

Amtram,

I am sincerely hoping you get timely treatment and that the costs will be covered, for the life of me I cannot understand how something so serious would not be covered by insurance. It is boggling to me.

[Amtram]

I'm hoping that the Affordable Care Act will give me some more options, but I somehow doubt it.

BTW, I remembered something else that really bothered me while I was out on this trip. Normally, I am great with directions and maps, but I had a really bad problem with this on our last trip out to two schools in Philadelphia, so I made sure to cover this before we left. It was important that I be aware of the routes because DD#2 gets carsick so easily that she's no help at all with navigating.

I printed out large maps. I printed out Google directions with small maps. I printed out local maps and campus maps. I knew in advance which routes were going to be troublesome and changed the maps to keep myself off of them.

Despite this, I also had to turn on Navigation on my phone, and kept forgetting what the directions said within moments of looking at them. Normally, I can find my way again if I get a little lost simply by instinct. This trip, I absolutely could not make heads or tails of where I was, relative to even the most straightforward of maps. My sense of direction is seriously impaired, and I didn't even notice it coming on until I had to travel someplace new this month.

My short-term memory is worse than ever - this business of forgetting things I'd made a conscious effort to memorize and plan for, even while my Adderall was in effect, is something entirely new.

I'm attributing this to the pressure, but for now it's just something I have yet to find out from the doctor.

[Peripheral]

Interesting Amtram,

Your well informed in general.

Thanks for explaining.

I looked up everything you said.

And like you said it seems to make sense.


(You know I am not a professional.

and I could be out to lunch.)


The area you describe above you left ear is close to parts of the frontal lobe,

temporal lobe and the parietal lobe.


The higher pitch in your left ear could have something to do with neurons in certain parts of the primary auditory cortex that detect higher tones?


If the sound is closer to left side is the pitch higher?

If the sound is from the right side is the pitch lower in the left ear?

If the sound is coming from far away on the left side is the pitch lower?

If the sound is coming from far away on the right side is the pitch even lower in the left ear?


I also wondered if the change from your ADHD competing thoughts,

to no competing thoughts,

might have something to do with the low dose pain killers?

Does this happen when you don't take the pain killers?


Anyway I wouldn't normally discuss something so personal with most people.

I understand your curious nature to understand.


You know I could be out to lunch on these ideas.


I learned a lot by looking up the information you provided.


Hope things get better soon.


Love Consider.

[Amtram]

The high-pitched tone in my left ear never varies. When it first began to change, I thought it might be related to either the Cymbalta or the Adderall. I tried skipping the Adderall while I was on Cymbalta, and noticed no significant difference. I thought then that going off the Cymbalta might help, but the volume kept going up gradually. It could be pressure somewhere on my auditory nerves in the left ear, which seems like a more reasonable idea. My thought is that if an actual audio processing area of my brain was affected, I'd experience something in both ears, or perhaps begin having difficulty in hearing sounds or understanding them. It's on my list to ask the doctor. (The painkillers were started after the other medication changes, so they're not the problem. . .)

GBYR, I'm going to try to keep track of changes I notice before surgery and after. I spoke with my mother this afternoon, and not only is this the same type of tumor, but it's in roughly the same location as hers was. She remembers her symptoms as only physical, nothing cognitive, and I wasn't living with her at the time so I can't dispute that either way.

The other thing that just occurred to me is to ask my eye doctor about my eye pressure. It was high enough that my optician recommended a medical workup, and I assumed it was more likely Cymbalta than glaucoma. No glaucoma, thank goodness, but I should go for another checkup before and after surgery to see if discontinuing Cymbalta lowered the eye pressure, and if not, if the pressure goes down after surgery. I don't recall whether there was any significant difference between one eye and the other. Curiouser and curiouser!

[Peripheral]

Originally Posted by Amtram

The high-pitched tone in my left ear never varies. When it first began to change, I thought it might be related to either the Cymbalta or the Adderall. I tried skipping the Adderall while I was on Cymbalta, and noticed no significant difference. I thought then that going off the Cymbalta might help, but the volume kept going up gradually. It could be pressure somewhere on my auditory nerves in the left ear, which seems like a more reasonable idea. My thought is that if an actual audio processing area of my brain was affected, I'd experience something in both ears, or perhaps begin having difficulty in hearing sounds or understanding them. It's on my list to ask the doctor. (The painkillers were started after the other medication changes, so they're not the problem. . .)

GBYR, I'm going to try to keep track of changes I notice before surgery and after. I spoke with my mother this afternoon, and not only is this the same type of tumor, but it's in roughly the same location as hers was. She remembers her symptoms as only physical, nothing cognitive, and I wasn't living with her at the time so I can't dispute that either way.

The other thing that just occurred to me is to ask my eye doctor about my eye pressure. It was high enough that my optician recommended a medical workup, and I assumed it was more likely Cymbalta than glaucoma. No glaucoma, thank goodness, but I should go for another checkup before and after surgery to see if discontinuing Cymbalta lowered the eye pressure, and if not, if the pressure goes down after surgery. I don't recall whether there was any significant difference between one eye and the other. Curiouser and curiouser!

Amtram

Sure is interesting,

interested to your findings.

Your discussing parts of the brain I haven't even heard of til today.

Never thought of the "layers" between the skull and brain before,

or hearing pitches etc...


I am stuck on understanding the left and right hemispheres.(for a couple of years now)


Specifically is one hemisphere suppose to be dominant,

and the other not dominant?



With the idea ,

that if I preformed everything the exact same,

with both sides of my body.

Like learn to write left handed and right handed,

the same.

Reach for things both left and right hands together ....etc

Would one side of my brain still be dominate over the other side.

Or would they be more balanced in function overall?


Are we suppose to have a dominant side?

Or is the dominant side dominant,

because we use one side more,

and one side less?

I think I might be of topic.