3 year survivor!

3 years ago, I woke up sick to my stomach thinking about the MRI I had scheduled for later in the morning.  It was Tuesday, June 4th.  I know my body and I knew something was wrong. I had MRIs in the past so I know how long it is supposed to take.  When I was in the machine, it was taking a lot longer than I remembered.  When I saw the neurologist in the mirror standing in the booth, it confirmed what I knew already; they see something on the scan.

Dr. E took Charles and I directly back to his office.  Without much bedside manner, he told us I have a glioma.  He gave us the name of a surgeon with George Washington University Medical Center.  The soonest he could see me was Friday.

One day after surgery.
I felt like a rockstar! Psych!

Fortunately, I was given contact information for the personal nurse of the Director of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Brain Tumor Center in Baltimore.  I was able to go the next morning (Wednesday) to Baltimore to meet him for a private consult.  He is the kindest, most empathetic physician I've ever met.  He explained how the craniotomy would be done and the chances of getting the majority of the tumor.

Mom, Charles, and I went to meet the GW surgeon on Friday.  He did not impress us.  He seemed very underwhelmed, like he did this all the time and it was no big deal.  But for each patient, it IS a big deal.

So I was able to make a date with Dr. O at Hopkins for the following Wednesday.  Unfortunately they had to reschedule for the following week.  I had to deal with my terrible migraines for another 10 days.  On June 18th (Tuesday), I went to Hopkins to get my pre-surgery MRI.  I had "life savor" stickers on my head overnight.  Mom, Dad, Charles and I stayed at a nearby hotel for the night since I had to be at the hospital at the crack of dawn.  They took me in pretty much right away.  I woke up over 6 hours later in the neurology ICU.  My surgeon was amazing and said he took out 99% of the tumor.

After my hospital stay, we waited several weeks for pathology.  The pathology department was having trouble classifying my tumor.  Eventually they settled on grade 3 astrocyma due to "some anaplastic cells" even though most of it was considered benign.

September 2013

After a lot of consultations with different doctors and the brain tumor board at Hopkins discussing my case twice, we decided I would do radiation and chemotherapy even though there was no evidence of the tumor on the MRI.  I did 42 straights of chemo and every weekday for 6 weeks.  I did 2 rounds of "maintenance chemo" but each time gave me new symptoms.

After researching and finding out the maintenance chemo shows no evidence of increasing length until recurrance, I decided to stop doing it.  It was the best choice for me and my family.  I took my last chemo pill on December 4th.  I have had no evidence of disease (NED) since then.

So today, I am a 3 year cancer survivor and "cancer free" for exactly 2 and a half years.   I couldn't have done it without the support of my family, friends, coworkers, and church family.  You all have no idea how grateful I am!  Thank you for making a difficult 3 years survivable.

Today we had our family pictures taken and went out to lunch at Le Madeline: