Anyone Had Gamma Knife?

My husband, 63, had surgery for GBM Dec. 6, 05 followed up by temoday and radiation. The MRI this week showed tumor still there. He is starting temodar 5 days per week at increased dosage on Monday. Anyone had luck with gamma knife?

My 39 year old husband had Gamma Knife in 11/04. It was a very easy procedure for him. The docs said they were able to deliver very high dosage of radiation. They also said that the area will look worse for about 3-6 months after the procedure before there is any improvement in the MRI. Unfortunately for us, the area never did improve after about 9 months and my husband had to have a craniotomy anyway. The pathology result indicated the area was a mixture of tumor and radiation necrosis from the Gamma Knife.

My mom had gamma knife last week. She had a horrible time. She is very ill. Maybe is she wasn't so sick it would be ok. But she cried because they hurt her head so much when they hooked her into the machine. NO Thanks...

My dad had gamma knife in Jan 2005 for a small piece of tumor that they couldn't cut on on the corpus collosum.

It was painful afterwards for about a day, but worked, as the small tumor is now gone.

He pulled through like a trooper.

I still have not exactly figured out if gamma knife and sterotactic are the same thing or not but my wife (49) had sterotactic in October/05. The procedure was involved some slight discomfort with the halo that they put on but she said it was far better than it looked. Other than the halo the procedure is completely painless.
She had whole brain radiation in September too. Her tumour has shrunk from 2.2 cm to 0.6 to 0.8 cm as of a couple of weeks ago and it continues to shrink. Is it worth it? Unquestionably yes !!
Good luck and best wishes to you.

A neurosurgeon at Duke told us he would not be a candidate for gamma knife since the device they put onyour head is round and emits doses in a cylindrycal form the tumor must be in a ball shape and since his is in the form of C shape it would not work. So we are back to only chemo or other drugs and that really knocks him out for about 2 weeks of the month before we start again.