Recent lack of responses

This is something that was intended to be shared several times already the past few weeks, but it hasn’t happened until now. As a result, it might seem that my siblings and myself aren’t responding to the comments we have received on this blog and over on Sleepless Whispers.

Yesterday, our dad has undergone brain surgery. This to treat his craniopharyngioma, which is a rare non-cancerous brain tumor. Non-cancerous only means that it doesn’t spread or invade other nearby tissue or other parts of the body. However, the brain tumor does grow. In fact, a craniopharyngioma is believed to develop before birth, during or shortly after the fetus stage of development.

A craniopharyngioma is located near the pituitary gland and can during its growth start pressing on the pituitary gland and nearby structures, which results in symptoms. The more notable ones include eye movement weakness, changes in vision, personality changes, hypothalamic dysfunction, low blood pressure, and fatigue.

During the symptomous stage, a craniopharyngioma can also result in hypothalamic obesity, a form of obesity resulting from the above named hypothalamic dysfunction in which typically the body makes too much insulin, resulting in non-stop hunger and an inability to lose weight even while eating healthy and exercising regularly. But also a disorder you’ll have heard on this blog before, non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome, a rare sleeping disorder which both my dad and older sister are affected by, which prevents a person from following a typical sleep schedule, often resulting in severe sleep deprivation.

This last one is also how the craniopharyngioma came to light eventually. It’s a whole story in itself that is up to my dad to share if he wishes to when he’s hopefully back to his normal state in a few weeks. If he chooses to do so, he will do so on Sleepless Whispers, my older sister’s blog, as that’s where he writes these days.

Regardless, the situation is the cause for our family’s current lack of activity online. It keeps our minds busy right now. Apart from school, as that’s where my siblings and myself have to focus upon as well, quite obviously. A good education is important. And with our dad being a teacher himself, it is also a way for us to show respect to him while he’s in hospital. The side effect is that we’re currently not responding to comments, and we apologize for that. More we can’t do right now.