Brain Tumor Symptoms

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What are Brain Tumor Symptoms? How can you notice them? and What should you watch out for? My family has been through the process of finding out about Brain Tumors, and the related symptoms.

If you would like to hear about brain tumor symptoms, there is some audio here. This is primarily based around my Dad's brain tumor symptoms. if you cannot hear the audio you may need to download adobe flash player.

You may download the MP3 file to listen to anytime here., Dad's Brain Tumor Symptoms MP3.

Brain Tumor Symptoms may not be that bad, or even seem unrelated. Hindsight is a good thing and now all my Dad's problems make sense.

BRAIN TUMOR SYMPTOMS WILL VARY A LOT. Do not rely on this list to be the determining factor about brain tumor symptoms. The place the tumor is located has a huge impact on the symptoms that you will see, you need to be very aware that all the symptoms vary and vary a lot.

"Frontal lobe tumors - Changes in personality and intellect. Un-coordinated walking or weakness of one side of the body. Loss of smell, occasional speech difficulties.

Parietal lobe - Difficulty in speaking or understanding words. Problems with writing or reading. Difficulty in co-ordinating certain movements. Difficulty finding your way around. Difficulty with numbers (doing simple calculations). Numbness or weakness on one side of the body.
Occipital lobe - Loss of vision on one side. The person may not notice this at first and it may sometimes be discovered during routine eye tests.
Temporal lobe - Fits may cause strange sensations: a feeling of fear or intense familiarity (dé jà vu), strange smells or blackouts. Speech difficulties and memory problems.
Cerebellum - Lack of co-ordination which affects walking and speech (dysarthria), unsteadiness, flickering involuntary movement of the eyes (nystagmus). Vomiting and neck stiffness.
Brain stem - Unsteadiness and an un-coordinated walk. Facial weakness, a one-sided smile or drooping eyelid. Double vision. Rarely, vomiting or headache just after waking; difficulty in speaking and swallowing. Symptoms may appear gradually."

This came from http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/Cancertype/Brain/Causesdiagnosis/Symptoms

My Dad's Tumor is about where the optic nerves meet the brain. And if my geography of the brain is right it is somewhere around the mid brain. My Dad's symptoms were basically in line with a combination of the Brain Stem, Occipital Lobe. Things make a lot more sense when you realize the differences in tumor positions and symptoms.

There is an excellent book, Living With Brain Tumors, we found it really helpful, goes through the brain tumor symptoms and living with all the associated problems of brain tumors.

I would like to draw your attention to a Maths Problem my Dad had, I have since heard of two other people that had a brain tumor that showed the exact same problem. Their tumors were in different parts of the brain, however they both had the same issues with simple problem solving. This stands out to us now as about 12 months before my Dad was diagnosed he was covering a deck. The deck was a rectangle and he could not figure out how to calculate the area of shade cloth he would need. He KNEW he should be able to do it, but just could not figure out HOW to do it. This from a person that had never had any issues with this type of problem in the past. We put it down to getting old, but now we know why.

Complete List Of Brain Tumor Symptoms

The most complete list of brain tumor symptoms that I could find is listed below.

I must stress again that in our experience most of these were not present.

Headache -- a persistent headache that is new for the person, worse on awakening
Vomiting -- possibly accompanied by nausea; more severe in the morning
Personality changes, behavior changes (this is the most depressing thing)
Emotional instability including rapid emotional changes
Loss of memory
Impaired judgment
Seizures
Reduced alertness, drowsiness
Double vision, decreased vision, especially peripheral vision
Hearing loss
Weakness of a body part or side.
Speech difficulties, slurring
Coordination problems, clumsiness, falls
Weakness, lethargy
Generally feeling off or ill
Positive Babinski's reflex
Decerebrate posture
Decorticate posture

Additional symptoms that may be associated with primary brain tumors:

Tongue problems
Swallowing difficulty
Impaired sense of smell, or strange smells
Obesity sudden weight gain
Uncontrollable movement, spasms
Dysfunctional movement
Absent menstruation
Hiccups, especially uncontrollable
Hand tremor, shakes
Facial paralysis, droopiness
Eye abnormalities
    pupils different sizes
    uncontrollable movements
    eyelid drooping
Confusion dissorientation
Breathing, absent temporarily
Unusual or strange behavior, personality changes.

This is all based on the information that can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007222.htm

By far the worst symptom is a change in personality, and that certainly was the case with us. It was almost as if my Dad was no longer there. It still sends shivers down my spine when I remember speaking to him and it not really being the same person. I think this is one of the worst things especially for my mother, when you see someone you have been with for many years change personality and change quickly. This however did not occur until later with my father after treatment, but occur it did. It is a good thing to be forewarned about that is it is very depressing and very very scary.

In the beginning my Dad's primary symptoms were

depth perception ( a bit scary when he was driving)
Shaking of the left hand
an inability to process simple maths problems
dragging of the left leg
a problem with his left eye, focus and peripheral vision
and in the end, no balance.

and that was really it. It wasn't until later that personality changes came to the fore.

No headache or anything like that, which we always found amazing, and still do to this day. At the writing of this Dad's Brain Tumor was the size of a golf ball, and he still has no headache, no nausea. And we now know that the Tumor is on the left hand side, which I suppose accounts for the strongest brain tumor symptoms to be associated with his left side.

But please remember not all these symptoms will be displayed, in our case only a few were displayed.

When someone that is 65, you expect little things to be going wrong. And the shaking on the hands, small vision loss and other small problems did not seem that major. Major enough to have them examined, and when given the all clear by the doctor, we all just believed it was old age. However my mother never lost that nagging feeling that something else was up.

So how did we know that our Dad had a brain tumor? Well the tumor blocked the drain that drains fluid off the brain. And basically one day he couldn't stand up!! Was straight into hospital for immediate brain surgery. That is really where our story starts.

PLEASE if you have the symptoms or some of the symptoms, especially the maths issue, get it checked out. And do not necessarily settle for ahhhhh yes that is just old age. You will need a contrast CT scan or an MRI. Get a second opinion if you wish just get it checked out. Time does matter the sooner you know for sure the better. My Dad had a CT scan at his normal medical checkup, and it showed no problems or anything out of the ordinary. Later we found out that to see a Brain Tumor you often need to have a Contrast CT scan.