This gives me Liberation and freedom and writing this makes me want to do MORE with Brain Tumor Awareness and so I think I shall start joining more things in Dallas, if I am able and of course, maybe a few weeks after my knee surgery!

Something I wrote for a Yahoo group.

If I could dedicate myself for one cause, what would it be and please explain yourself.

The presence of Brain tumors and brain lesions is on the rise every day in our country. That is what I would dedicate myself to, if I were able to and had the total available resources and the large sum of money to be able to do this argumentum task!

I have written a little here and there in my stories about myself for this yahoo group. Let me explain the total reason for Brain Tumor Awareness that I pledge to every year. It is not a lot of money, only $5.00, for that is all I can afford on my Disability check, but it is something to give back to the kind people that have given to me these past almost 16 years~!

I was diagnosed in May of 1989, one month before my 19^th birthday. I will not get into details for some of you have already heard them. I live with an “inoperable brainstem tumor” in the “Aqueduct of Sylvius” blocking the flow of Cerebral Spinal Fluid and therefore, causing a brain disease, “Chronic Hydrocephalus”. I immediately had brain surgery for a VA shunt to be placed. That is where it goes from the brain to the heart and the CSF fluid gets reabsorbed into the bloodstream. I have since had 14 revisions and I now have a shunt that goes from the brain to the chest! It is called Ventricular Pleural.

We later found out, several years down the road, after radiation, that the tumor was actually a Lesion and that in September 1997 a doc took it out in Dallas. I was the 23^rd case in the WHOLE USA to have brainstem surgery AND lived to tell about WITH essentially few side affects to the point that I could start driving again. It was not until the year 2001 that the Department of Motor Vehicles took away my license. I was having too many seizures. I have not driven since. Makes it hard on my family. I am a home-body now!

I have had yearly MRI’s since then to check for possible new growth and for the past seven years, all has been clear. That is, until this year. Turns out this new lesion discovered on August 9^th, 2004 was actually on the scan in January 2003! Made me so mad! However, I was worrying for nothing, because I had two independent neurosurgeons say the same thing! They said “It is nothing to worry about~!” The lesion is actually ON THE SKULL! Is that weird or what?

I was happy yet something in my gut told me to be wary. We shall see.

I rode for the Brain Tumor Awareness and the MDA in a bike-a-thon back in October 1989, before my balance got too far off that I could not ride anymore. I tried riding a bike this past summer, and I fell and broke my thumb!!!!! OUCH!!!!

That, is what I would dedicate myself to, Brain Tumor Awareness.

Written by Becca E Henry on October 23^rd, 2004 at 5:20pm
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