Alive and Fighting: Coping with a Brain Tumor and a Bone Marrow Transplant

I have now survived for three years with a brain tumor. It was not just any tumor; it was a glioblastoma multiforme. Glioblastoma multiforme is the most fatal and aggressive of all brain tumors. The average life expectancy with glioblastoma multiforme is approximately 54 to 65 weeks. That's just over one year! It has been quite an ordeal since I first started speaking gibberish and had a grand mal seizure on June 3, 2002, the day my tumor was discovered. It's crazy to think what a difference a single day had on my life. This book discusses my second and third years, which also included a bone marrow transplant because the chemotherapy had destroyed my bone marrow. Now, three years later, I still have many things to deal with on a daily basis including graft-versus-host disease from the bone marrow transplant, and reading and memory problems because a large piece of my brain was removed during my brain surgery. Surviving the first year was one of the most difficult things I have ever faced, but the second and third years were even harder. I am not even close to winning my battle over cancer, but I continue to fight until the end. There were many times that I just wanted to give up, even if the result was death. It was becoming too hard to fight as I became increasingly sick with each treatment. However, I never gave up. I have family and friends that I am not ready to leave yet and things I still want to do, so I will continue to fight!