Putting Our Heads Together
Posted in Late Effects, News, Stories on May 27th, 2009
Of the 90 or so Bailey students awarded degrees that day, she was the
only one who had to go through Hurricane Katrina and a brain tumor to get
hers.
Posted in Late Effects, News, Stories on May 26th, 2009
On March 28th, 2007 I went spontaneously deaf in my left ear. Yes. it apparently can happen just like that. It’s called Sudden Onset Sensory Neural Healing Loss and it happens every day, mostly to old people. Evidently, the cochlea just wakes up and decides to stop working.
It was the general consensus of my entire medical team that this was — for me — in fact a late-effect rearing it’s ugly head after all that Chernobyl-level head radiation I had when I was being treated for brain cancer in 1996.
Posted in Stories on May 26th, 2009
“People will not usually remember what you say, but they always remember how you made them feel.”
I remember stumbling across this Warren Beatty quote a few years back. To be honest, for the longest time I struggled with attributing something seemingly profound to a Hollywood actor but I guess I got over that.
Posted in Stories on May 11th, 2009
She leaned on her husband, using his strength to hide her unsteadiness. Her steps were tentative, measured, cautious, with her gait more typical of a woman decades older than her late 20s. She could still walk, shake hands and almost smile, at least with one side of her mouth; she couldn’t let the tumor take those gifts away — not yet. She had to stay healthy another few weeks, until her baby was born.
Posted in Brain Tumor Action Week, Stories on May 10th, 2009
Every night before she falls asleep, Annette McKeon kisses a picture of her daughter. “I love you Aimee,” she says softly, and then squeezes a Teddy bear named Hope. A recording of Aimee’s voice plays from inside. “I love you Mom.” Some nights, she squeezes the toy over and over again. “It keeps her alive,” Ms. McKeon says.
Neurosurgeons at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit used Twitter and YouTube to post live real-time updates of a brain surgery.
Posted in Legislation, News, Stories on Mar 29th, 2009
The nuclear bombs Charlie Wolf built helped win the Cold War. But his toughest battles came afterward, when he applied to a troubled federal compensation program intended for those whose top-secret work made them sick.
Most young women Melissa McClelland’s age are worried about looking their best — finding just the right dress, makeup, hairstyle and jewelry. But the 22-year-old Ventura College student doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of angst. Instead, Melissa worries about the brain cancer that recurred five months ago.
Last August, Caiden Steinhoff was diagnosed with medulla blastoma, the most common brain tumor in children. Following brain surgery, the Thunder Bay boy has undergone four chemotherapies, each of which wipes out his immune system.
The heartbroken family of a 10-year-old Nebraska girl diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, who is not expected to live through the end of the month, say the Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied the child’s dying wish: that her incarcerated father be furloughed to be by his child’s bedside when she dies.
