Video: An expert view on how to face a new brain cancer diagnosis

We asked a Mayo Clinic expert: What advice do you have for patients with a new brain tumor diagnosis?

Ian Parney, M.D., Ph.D., Neurosurgery: It's a complete shock to anybody when they first get told that they have a brain tumor. Nobody plans for this. So I think sometimes, take a little bit of time to sort of think about it.

I think getting your questions answered, having some time to sort of think about that, ask your questions, get other information you know from other sources so that you're not just getting it from one person.

I think thinking about the questions that they'd want to ask, "Why am I here? Why am I seeing a neurosurgeon? What would the next steps be? What are the benefits and the risks of anything that's been proposed? What's the experience of both the surgeon and the institution in dealing with these types of complex problems?" Because those things really matter.

Bring people with you to the visit so that it's not just you, so you have other people thinking and remembering and things that way and then take advantage of every possible way to inform yourself both with the physician but just in general.

I think that the patients that often do the best in terms of their quality of life and things after surgery are people who say, "Yeah, I'm going to get back to my job. I'm going to get back to school. I'm going to get back to my regular activities. Maybe I'm even going to start exercising and making sure that I eat better," and doing all those types of things. I think that sort of full-on embrace of life going forward with this is really helpful for everything.

Dr. Parney has spent his career improving the odds for patients who need brain surgery.

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