My tumour was located in the left cerebellar hemisphere. It was a pilocytic astrocytoma. A pilocytic astrocytoma is a Grade 1 Astrocytoma, which means generally no follow up care is needed if the tumour is totally resected.
I was told that the tumour was highly calcified and that it was creating a large cystic mass. The cyst was responsible for most of my pre-operative symtoms. I’ll get to those in a later post. The calcified nature of the tumour indicated that I likely had it for a long time.
The tumour itself was located in the cerebellum. The cerebellum is traditionally viewed as the part of the brain that is responsible for the coordination of movement and balance. However, some researchers believe it may also play a role in other functions. For example, the neurologist Jeremy Schmahmann describes Cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome as “a constellation of deficits in the cognitive domains of executive function, spatial cognition, language, and affect resulting from damage to the cerebellum.”
I tend to believe that I no longer function at the same level cognitively and I have the test scores to prove it! However, I have no training in anything remotely scientific, so I’m not the one to be blogging about what are and aren’t functions of the cerebellum. All I’ll say is that my attention span and memory is generally not as good as it used to be. I have a feeling that the traditional view of the cerebellum doesn’t entirely explain the challenges I continue to face.
cerebellar insult 