Two family members

I had a meningioma removed 9 years ago. Last spring I started to have partial clonic seizures believed to be due to scar tissue. My tumor was an atypical grade 2 which can come back aggressively. I will have MRIs every six months for life. My 8 year grandson had emergency surgery on St. Patrick’s Day of this Year (2019) for a mendulloblastoma. He is still in intensive care a week later, when he has recovered he will have Proton Beam Radiation (PBR) treatment for 6 weeks, then more time to recover from that and then start chemo therapy. It is diagnosed that it will be a year for recovery. We are extremely lucky to live an hour from Boston, MA where I had my surgery and PBR. I understand that PBR (which minimizes damage to healthy brain tissue) is limited and not available to many because of the expense of building a PBR facility (there are very few throughout this country). It would be my hope that funding was available to make PBR available to all brain tumor patients. It is a much safer treatment, especially for children!

 

---

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