Julianna Guebara’s Battle Against Brain Cancer
Several weeks ago we took Juju to see her pediatrician after we and her teacher started noticing some odd behaviors. She was experiencing loss of balance, trouble retaining information, regression in reading and writing... just to name a few. The pediatrician referred us to a neurologist, but the following week Texas decided to freeze over and shut down.... Since we could not get into the first neurologist, her pediatrician referred a few other neurologists and after calling many that wouldn’t be able to see her for weeks, we finally found one that could fit her in on Monday.
The neurologist scheduled for us to have an MRI on Tuesday morning at Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus. When we took her in at 7:30am, I had no idea I would not be going back home for a few weeks. The MRI scans showed that she had a large Medulloblastoma on her brain that has metastasized to a couple tiny lesions on her spine. They sent us down to the Emergency Center immediately where she was examined. Next, they transported us via ambulance to the Main Campus in the medical center. We spent the next few hours in the Emergency Center here before being admitted to the inpatient hospital later that night. Wednesday we met with several specialists that would be on Juju’s care team including her neurosurgeon, Dr. Aldave. He explained to us that she was to have surgery the very next morning. On Thursday morning Juju went into surgery and we waited anxiously until around 8:30pm before we saw her again. Praise God, Dr. Aldave was able to achieve total resection of the tumor on her brain!
She spent 3 nights in the ICU after surgery before we were moved to the neuro recovery floor for about another week. She has worked with Occupational, Physical and Speech therapy daily. The first few days were difficult for her, but she pushed through the tears and worked so hard! With each day we saw huge improvements in her, appetite, mood and skills.
She will still be receiving her therapies several times a week to get her back to her baseline and help keep her as close to that as possible during her treatments.
On April 5th Juju will begin proton radiation treatments at MD Anderson that will last roughly 6 weeks. She will then have 6 weeks of “rest” but will have to go through testing during that time. This will be followed by 7 rounds of chemotherapy that will require both inpatient and outpatient visits.
During this time we bear the burden of medical costs and living costs as we know life must goon and we must be able to provide for Juju and her brother. The stress of fighting this terrible disease is long term. The pandemic has put a significant strain on Julianna’s father’s business this year and her mom will be on an unpaid leave from work. We are overwhelming thankful for any support you may feel led to give.
We ask for prayers as we continue this journey for her to beat this terrible disease! We have faith that God is building her up to be stronger than we can ever imagine. We can’t see it right now, but we KNOW that God has a bigger plan for our girl!
#prayforjuju #childhoodcancerawareness #braincancerawareness #medulloblastoma #texaschildrenshospital #mdandersoncancercenter