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“One of the questions we get asked quite often is when can I go back to work? And as I mentioned earlier, the three steps to undergoing the management of malignant glioma include surgery, followed by radiation temozolomide for six weeks with additional adjuvant temozolomide thereafter. Majority of people find that I discussed with them that they should probably take several weeks off, anywhere between eight to 12 weeks off after their surgical intervention to recover purely from the surgery. There are those individuals who really don’t undergo any significant medical issues after their surgical intervention, are looking forward to getting back to work right away. Even for those individuals, I discussed with them that they’re going to be embarking upon an additional therapy or radiation along with their temozolomide and they may experience some of that fatigue, which sometimes can be very significant.
So even for those individuals, I say, let’s see how you’re going to be doing for the first three to four weeks, three weeks, and decide whether or not you really want or feel like you want to go back to work. For some people that experienced this disease, they are the breadwinners of the family and contribute significantly to the financial stability of their family. Quite often, companies will provide FMLA leave and we certainly will be a part of making sure that they get taken care of from that financial standpoint as well. It’s very difficult to determine exactly how long an individual will be on leave, whether it will be a short term leave or a protracted leave of absence or stopping work all together. And that really depends on quite a few things. Some of which we don’t have control over, it depends on where the tumor’s located.
It depends on how the individual responds to the radiation. It depends on how the individual responds to the chemotherapy. And it also depends on how stable the tumor is and whether or not there’s any other progressions within that timeframe. A majority of time, I’ll end up saying to people, you know what, let’s get through your radiation therapy again, at least three weeks and decide whether or not you can go back to work. So for some individuals that don’t require a lot of physical activity around in public safety, certainly they can get back to work a little bit quicker than some others. Obviously, if an individual has a malignant brain tumor may have presented with a seizure and is an airline pilot, certainly that that would be not a safe thing to return to work to do. So again, it also depends on the type of job, the individual and the level of activity that they do for their work.”
