Joe Nose Best

Joe Nose Best

Joe

We thought our lives had changed on August 23, the day that we welcomed our first child. We thought life had given us everything we could handle at this time – a beautiful, healthy baby boy that we loved more than words could express even through the sleepless nights, diaper changes and challenges feeding.

Little did we know that just two weeks later, life would deal us another hand – only this one not so joyous. That is the day I had to call my family from a doctor’s office to tell them I most likely had cancer. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, had literally ripped all the joy I had in my heart and threw it away.

The type of cancer is a rare type of a brain tumor with the advantage being it is also one of the lesser aggressive ones. We cannot say enough about the doctor that I initially saw for what I thought was just a stuffy nose. She basically fell into our laps thanks to our baby boy. We had received a listing of local ENTs after he was diagnosed with tongue and lip ties. While we chose to take him to a pediatric dentist for treatment, we held on to the list we had received and BOY – are we glad we did.

After finding the abnormal growth in my nasal cavity, she immediately started sending me for additional tests to find out what we were dealing with. Any time she had test results for us, we received a phone call before 8:30 in the morning. She got me into Dana Farber within days of his official diagnosis and has even called to check in on how things are going. She truly was amazing and we cannot thank her enough for everything she did for us. I had a 12 hour surgery to remove the tumor followed up by nearly 70 radiation treatments and 3 chemo treatments from December 2014 to February 2015.

Opinions expressed within this story belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of the National Brain Tumor Society.