Week #6 (Nerymar Ortiz Otero): Glioblastoma vs. Meningioma

           For this week, I was observing surgeries of patients with severe conditions and how is the healing process for them. I could see the patients before, during and after the surgical procedure and basing this I could determine the healing process.

           For the first case, the patient had a malignant glioblastoma. That was the third surgery for the brain tumor resection. At this time, Dr. Schwartz told me that this is the last shot for her because she has to much neurological damage where she doesn’t have enough time to fight with that (she is dying) . The surgery impressed me a lot because she had a huge space in her brain due the last two surgeries. She had a space in the frontal part toward down. The big space allowed you see the optical cavity inside of the skull. According with the MRI, the glioblastoma was large but they just removed only small parts of this.  Dr. Schwartz could not remove the whole tumor because she will loss to many important brain functions. Before to remove the tumor, they made a brain functionality test to know which parts they could remove from the brain. The removed glioblastoma was put in vessels to bring this to research lab. I could see her two days after the surgery, and she was not doing well. She had to much pain in her body that the nurse could not touch her. Also, she was not conscious and awake.

          For the second case, the patient had a large meningioma in the left frontal lobe. The meningioma extracted was really big and it had many vascularization.  This was put in a vessel to bring this for the research studies. The more exciting moment in this surgery was to observe the appearance of the tumor. This was big with a irregular shape and to many blood vessels inside of it. I could see the patient two days after of surgery and she was doing well.  As consequence of the tumor, she could not move the right arm and its fingers. However, after two days, she could move the arm very well and the fingers slowly. In other word, she was in recovery process where the symptoms are gone.