September 29, 2010 was the first anniversary of the day I found out that I have a brain tumor. A lot of people have had questions about the tumor, how I found out about it, how I am feeling, what the treatments are and things like this. Some friends have hesitated to ask since they are not sure if I want to share or not. By the way, I don’t mind sharing at all and sometime soon I hope to write about raising awareness of brain tumors. In the interest of answering some questions, I will share some of the story of the last year of my life.
In August and September of last year I commuted 2 or 3 days each week to Starkville, Mississippi to work on my Ph.D. in management at Mississippi State. On Tuesday, September 29, I had been at school for about an hour and was walking from the M&IS offices on the 3rd floor back to my office on the 2nd floor when I suddenly felt more dizzy then I had ever felt in my life. I was in a stairwell but was thankfully unable to get to the top of the stairs. I tried to open the door to go back into the hallway but was unable to grasp the door handle. At this point I was so dizzy that I decided to sit down and put my head between my knees. After a few moments I lay over on my side and I felt my head begin to jerk. I had the thought that, “I think I’m having a seizure,” and then I lost consciousness.
I think it was only a few minutes later, Nadine, the departmental secretary opened the door to the stairwell. I was on the floor behind the door and two of my fingers were pinched between the door and the floor. I still have very little feeling in the tip of my ring finger on my left hand because of nerve damage from this. The pain from my fingers being crushed roused me enough to be aware that someone was there and for me to say, “I need help.” I heard someone say, “Oh my gosh!” and I lost consciousness again.
The next thing that I was aware of was being loaded into an ambulance and I was flailing and fighting someone who was yelling at me to calm down and stop fighting. I was panicked and not really aware of what I was doing or why but I couldn’t stop. Apparently, I pulled out a couple of IVs. By the time we arrived in the ER at the hospital in Starkville I was calmer and more aware. Shannan and D’Lisa, two of my good friends from school stayed with me in the emergency room. They contacted my husband, Tony, who was at home with my 10 year old son who had stayed home from school sick that day. Tony checked my 15 year old daughter out of school and the 3 of them headed for Starkville.
At the hospital in Starkville they performed a CT scan then almost immediately loaded me into another ambulance and sent me to Tupelo. They explained that there was something on the CT scan and the nearest neurologist was in Tupelo. An MRI in Tupelo revealed a tumor that I was informed about that evening.
I chose to go to the brain tumor center at UAB and had a stereotactic biopsy (needle biopsy) on October 7. The results of that were that I have a grade 2 astrocytoma. It is a large tumor, measuring roughly 7cm x 5cm x 4 cm, and is in the right parietal and occipital lobes. It is considered inoperable because it would very severely impact the quality of my life (movement, vision and speech). On October 22, I began radiation treatments with concurrent chemotherapy. I lived in Birmingham at Hope Lodge for 6 weeks during the week and came home to Florence on the weekends. I had radiation 5 days a week for 6 weeks and oral chemotherapy every day. I finished those treatments in early December. In January, I started a regimen of oral chemotherapy where I take the chemo at home for five days each month. I will finish my 12th and final round of chemo in January 2011. This chemo does make me feel sick but it does not cause hair loss. The radiation did make my hair fall out but it is coming back in nicely. In fact it is quite thick, darker and curly now!
In between rounds of chemo, I feel good. I get tired more quickly than before but I have started working again. I’m working part-time for UNA and am also doing management consulting. This fall I’m even taking a class. I’m going to sleep about 9 pm, but it feels really good to do something that feels normal.
This is a longer posting than I plan to be making in general but I knew that there were questions to be answered. I don’t mind sharing information, especially if it can help others in some way, and I have had a year to research, so if there is something brain tumor related that I can help with, please let me know!
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