The scalp tumour.

This page is not for the faint hearted. It is important to record the process here as, at the time this page is started, the tumour in the scalp appears to be growing again, and monitoring it is an aid to dealing with it.

The third operation was precipitated particularly by the fact that the glioblastoma had infiltrated skull and scalp. Affected skull was replaced with acrylic, but it was not feasible to remove the tumour-infiltrated scalp - to attempt anything like that would have required another six hours of cosmetic surgery and removal of a latissima muscle (put a hand across to the opposite armpit, the muscle on the back you grab is the latissima) to be placed on the head in place of excised scalp, along with blood vessels and skin graft. As we know that glioblastoma cells migrate, there would be no certainty of excising them all anyway, and such an intervention would only hamper the efforts of a body trying to cope with tumour still alive inside the skull.

This is what the surgeon saw after Margaret had been shaved down for the operation on 2 July:

2 July photo Dr Raymond Cook

...and here was the quality of wound healing evident on about 26 July:

25 July photo Dr Raymond Cook

Some regrowth seemed to be taking place in early August and after a trim, these photos below were taken on 10 August.

- note also the small bulge with blue ink around it, below the main lump.

10 August 2001

While these new growths do not seem large yet, they seem likely to contain rapidly duplicating (as little as 15 hours) glioblastoma cells. It seems desirable to see what can be done to avoid a major problem arising, another large growth at risk of bursting, at risk of requiring an intervention from which wound repair may not go so well... There will no doubt be more on this page, press REFRESH or RELOAD to see if the text still ends here. This text 10 August 2001.