Spring Sprint: Kathy's Story

Kathy was one of the very first people to register for Spring Sprint 2015. She lives in Ottawa and is participating in honour of her husband Clarke with Team Scobie. This is their story.

My husband (Clarke) was diagnosed with a primary, malignant GBM in May 2012. Since then he’s had surgery, the standard six-week radiation and chemo (5/23 Temodal). He responded well to the chemo so it was continued until January 2014 at which time they found regrowth.

He had a Cyberknife treatment at the end of January, which apparently is still working. His last MRI (his 16th) was stable with what they believe to be an increase in radiation necrosis.

As have gone through this journey I have found things that I wish people knew about this disease. Things like, brain tumours don’t have to be cancerous to be deadly. And that even though the treatment may be successful, the after-affects are real and enduring.

I can’t speak for others, but even though my husband’s treatment has been largely successful, he will never be the man he was. Unlike other illnesses, the damage to the brain from his treatment will never go away.

And so I am participating in Spring Sprint (now Brain Tumour Walk) because we need to raise funds for research, increase awareness about this disease and we want to show our support for Clarke. It’s also good for him to see that he isn’t alone, to see that there are so many other people affected by this disease.

This will be Team Scobie’s third year participating and I hope that we’ll be able to raise even more than we did last year. It’s already looking like we’ll have more friends and family out that day.

That so little is known about brain tumours, their cause and treatment. Although great progress has been made, a lot still needs to be done. He’s had great care, but he’s at the point that even the brightest minds don’t know what to do next.

Raising funds and awareness is key, we need to get this to the same level of awareness that we have for other cancers and the funds and research will follow.

Thank you Kathy for sharing your story and for your support of Spring Sprint (now Brain Tumour Walk). The movement to end brain tumours is stronger because of you and your team.