Anna "Hope and Grief"

Photo by Randy Bacon

I’m loyal to a fault. I see the silver lining in everything. I think that being kind is the bravest thing you can do, and last but not least, don’t write anything down you don’t want on the front page of the newspaper. That’s from my mom.

In March 2013, I was getting regular migraines which aren’t an indicator of brain tumors, but it doesn’t help. I just thought it was hormonal cause I was 35 and my mom got migraines in her mid-30’s. They went in, did a craniotomy, and got the entire tumor. Pathology showed it was a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma, which means my brain was creating the tumor. It wasn't coming from somewhere else or going anywhere else but was being created solely through the astrocytes; which are star-shaped cells in your brain.

I had the surgery done in Joplin, and then we ended up at St. Luke’s in KU Med cause they actually have a Neuro-Oncologist. Someone who specializes in brain cancer, not just an Oncologist. It’s not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. I did a combination of radiation and chemotherapy, every day for 7 weeks. Monday through Friday I lived in Kansas City, and then came back to Joplin on the weekends. I did that for 7 weeks. It was oral chemo so it wasn’t as harsh. I got to take poison pills which directly affect your digestive system rather than your bloodstream. So, my gut is wrecked.

That was almost 10 years ago and now I’m finding out that this can come back every ten years. Had I known, I probably could have prevented it a little bit. So, I did another year and a half of just chemo because I was done with the radiation. When I finished out my chemo, I would still go for scans; at first it was like every month, and then every few months, and then every six months, and then we went yearly, and then after yearly, the whole COVID thing happened. Everything started looking different. I couldn’t meet with the doctors anymore. I had to do everything electronically and technologically.

After Covid calmed down, I got to meet with doctors very quickly. And once I saw them in person again, the doctor wanted to get me off the steroids I had been on for the last 6 months to a year. I was crazy. Steroids make me crazy. Any time there's swelling on my brain, the only thing I can take that will relieve any of the pressure on my brain, are steroids. I had surgery again on March 7th, 2022. They let me out of the hospital on March 11th. That means, it came back just this year. So,

10 years later. Remember that part? I had gone to Bolivar to have an MRI. You know when you tell people how you feel in your own body and they don’t normally believe you? I knew something was wrong, I knew I was having tumor level stress. They say stress doesn’t affect you physically. So, I told them what was going on with me and she was like, “well we’re going to have to order you another MRI”, even though I had just had one the day before. When she came back, you could tell as she walked over, that it was not good news. I was there with my husband, Rob. She said, “everything you thought, is true”. It had grown, clearly, a couple inches larger than the first time. And now, it’s a grade 4 glioblastoma instead of a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma. Which is the worst you can get. And then it felt like, whatever could go wrong, did go wrong. That was in April of this year, so it’s been about 9 months. They couldn’t get all of this one because it was bigger and more aggressive and it was moving over into the left hemisphere of my brain. That’s why I can’t really move my left side. I went through another round of radiation and chemo. The entire recovery process is different, but it’s also more aggressive. This is the worst case scenario right now.

Photo by Randy Bacon

They weren’t gonna let me do another round of chemo, which seems pointless when you have cancer. So, a few weeks ago we were ready to just, “throw it in” and give up. When you’re backed into a corner and you only have two options, what do you do? They said you have a couple weeks to a couple months left. They thought I had an infection in my brain fluid around my shunt, cause I have a shunt too. If there was an infection, they couldn’t do chemo and if they can’t do chemo, there isn’t another option. But nothing came up on the cultures, so they said I could do another round and that’s where we are now. I’m on my week off right now. I’m very tired today, but I’ve had a lot of appointments the past week and a half.

There are days when I just want to pull the covers up over my head and cry all day. And then there are days and weeks where I feel like everything’s just a cycle, right? Like, you’re gonna just come back around to the other side no matter what, cause that's what life is.

Photo by Randy Bacon

Cancer sucks. But never ever lose hope, because the second you lose hope, you lose everything. All I’ve been doing is practicing that and doing my own studies with it. “If I wake up with these thoughts in my head, what am I gonna be like; and if I wake up with THESE thoughts in my head and speak them, what’s that gonna be like?”

I would say the things I’ve learned that are most important in life are joy and kindness. I mean I practice it, but I also believe it. And then there’s grief. At the very beginning, I had this whole thing of hope and grief. This idea of can I hold hope and grief in the same hand, the same way? And what does it look like if I don’t? But they’re just two sides of the same coin. I’m fine until he breaks down, (“he” is my husband, Rob) and when he breaks down, I lose my shit.

If I could share anything with someone who is going through this, I would tell them to trust their instincts. My gut has yet to fail me.

Photo by Mandy Vela

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