Life after gamma knife and you nivo

My husband had stereotactic radiosurgery for his brain mets … not sure if that's like gamma knife, but I think it's pretty comparable? Anyway, he did surprisingly well after it! He also had whole-brain radiation. He did not experience many side effects from the stereotactic radiosurgery at all. He wasn't able to work, but unfortunately that's because the cancer progressed too quickly elsewhere in his body. The brain stuff wasn't too bad apart from a crazy craniotomy!

My wife had gamma knife in August 2017.   One shot to a 10mm tumor in the left temporal lobe and 8 more shots to the periphery of a resection cavity where she had had a 26mm tumor removed the week before, so 9 shots total.   She had one day of nausea and vomiting then recovered well.   In December she has some radiation necrosis show up at the resection cavity (showed up on MRI, no symptoms) and they treated that with 4 doses of Avastin, which stopped it.   She has been on the Ipi/Nivo combo (4 doses of ipi now on Nivo only) since September 2017 and is NED.   She recoved quickly and works every day.   The immunotherapy did wipe out her thyroid, which is fairly common, but that was easily controlled with Thyroxine tablets.

Hi Vince. My husband had whole brain radiation in February of last year(2018) then received 8 doses of The Ipi/novo combo, the last one being in July of 2018. At his 1 year stage 4 diagnosis he was declared NED and now attempting his return to work. He is 34 years old and works construction as a gradesman. He is really struggling. The fatigue is incredibly debilitating and he has a lot of joint pain. His lungs seem to have had some kind of an immune flair up as well as his skin and eyes. To be honest I’m not sure he can continue to do this type of job anymore. I think there is always hope to return to work but it may depend on what it is you do for a living and I would also suggest taking it slow and not rushing back.

I wish you luck on your journey.