Brain Cancer is hard, the battle has started

Just over one month ago Karah underwent emergency brain surgery, below is her story beautifully written in her own words. Throughout this time so many have helped, cooked, donated, loved and supported the family. Please keep all of that up! We know this is going to be intense, lengthy, and costly. Will you all please share this fundraiser to ask for additional help as Karah is on this long journey to conquer cancer?

I wanted to share a little cancer update. I have received so many messages with love and support and questions about how things are going and updates. My short term memory is still a struggle, post surgery…❤️

I've now met with my radiation and chemo oncology teams. They have decided that radiation will be the first treatment and now we wait for the upcoming start date while awaiting being released from Neuro post surgery. It'll be 6 to 8 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week, each week. I had my radiation mask made this week. I will also have additional scans this month, one being of my spine to check for cancer there or to see if it is using that area to travel to other parts of my body.

Neuro had a specific timeline for healing from my brain surgery before treatments could start….at first I felt like their timeline was just too long…but now that I am so many weeks out from surgery. I get it! I still feel like the surgery site is fresh and new. It still hurts, constantly, it's crazy.

My ongoing headaches and pain behind my eyes is still here and still difficult to manage. Along with the pain, my POTS syndrome (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) has decided to ramp up over the last few weeks. ‍ It just makes everything even more difficult.

Yesterday we met with the chemo oncology team…The words rare and aggressive just continue to be thrown at us… I feel like yesterday day, we actually learned a lot more about this and it was kind of scary and shocking to hear about the numbers, research (well lack of) and information surrounding just how rare this cancer is…. honestly, it makes me sick to think about it. But, it sounds like my team is attempting to communicate with specific specialists and other medical teams who can help in any way possible as they learn about this cancer too.

During the appointment, they shared that they have decided on a chemo regimen of 3 specific drugs. Unfortunately, this chemo regimen requires a minimum of a 3 day inpatient hospital stay each time I receive my chemo treatment. They shared that the chemo treatments will be ongoing for about 6 months or so… I think that was the hardest thing to hear during the appointment. I wasn't prepared for the news of so many hospital admissions during the course of this battle. I feel like this cancer is already taking away so much. I can't even begin to imagine having to be so sick for so long, losing so much time to just live life and having to be away from my kids, family, pets, home and work so much over that time…but, here we are…and I have no choice but to do this damn thing!

The next step is to continue with more genetic testing to learn more about this beast of a tumor and how my body is working. Following that, we will address how this genetic mutation may affect my kids as well.

I am constantly blown away by all of the love and support that continues to come in. Thank you all. ❤️❤️