Mary's Story

This is the story of my day at The London Gamma Knife Centre at Barts.

So why did I end up going there for treatment? Well, a few months earlier I started to lose my hearing in one ear. My children kept telling me I was going deaf so I went along to have a test. The result showed that while I had very little hearing in my right ear, the hearing in my left ear was normal.

My GP then sent me along to the local hospital for an MRI scan which showed that I had a benign tumour and although it�s slow growing they wanted to treat it fairly soon. I had the choice of either having an operation to remove the tumour completely, which could damage a nerve, or having Gamma Knife therapy. I was told that damage to the nerve could mean paralysing my face down one side and no-one could guarantee this would recover. On the other hand, the chance of this happening with the Gamma Knife would be less than 1%. I decided it was worth giving the Gamma Knife a go � it meant I would avoid an operation and all that entails.