Fundraiser for Tom Conry Brain Tumor Recovery

Dear Friends and Family,

We are posting this go fund me for those who would like to donate to Tom’s medical -recovery fund. Tom and I are both so grateful for all the love and support we have received over the last few months since his brain tumor diagnoses. We understand that everyone’s situation is different – please donate whatever is comfortable for you if you can.

My husband Tom was diagnosed with a grade 1 chondrosarcoma skull-based brain tumor in October 2023. It was 5cm – for those not on the metric system that’s about the size of a lemon. Due to the size and that Tom was already experiencing vision loss, severe fatigue, and other medical issues we were advised that the only way forward was a brain surgery We were fortunate to be referred to Northwestern and work with Dr. Magill and Dr. Conley. On December 21st Tom went in for surgery – 14 hours later the doctors came out with the news that they had successfully removed 95% of the tumor – the surgical plan that they put together had gone through successfully no complications no deviations from the plan and Tom’s vitals had remained strong throughout.

Unfortunately, 5 days later Tom suffered from a pulmonary embolism coupled with aspiration of stomach acid to his lungs – these events caused the lungs to spasm and his heart to stop. The doctors were able to resuscitate Tom after 20 minutes but the damage to the lungs was just too great and he needed more than just ventilator support, it was determined that he needed to be put on ECMO or lung bypass because his lungs were unable to do the oxygen/co2 exchange needed to keep him alive. One day after ECMO Tom then suffered a bleed event – he started bleeding from his nose, and it would not stop – he had over 15 blood transfusions and it was necessary to bring him back to the OR to try and stop the bleeding. It didn’t work – during the bleeding event Tom’s tongue swelled, and he was unable to close his mouth – the tube caused a lot of damage and ultimately Tom has lost part of his tongue and right now is unable to swallow anything more than water/coffee – thin liquids.

In total Tom spent 30 days in the ICU in critical condition and underwent 4 more surgeries then he was transferred to Shirley Ryan Ability lab where he spent another 30 days inpatient rehab doing physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech/swallow therapy.

Now that he’s home after being hospitalized for 2 months we still have a long way to go to get him back to normal he’ll be doing rehab 3 days a week and we still have the 5% that is left of the tumor to deal with.

We are so grateful that Tom is on the right path now to recovery for awhile there we didn’t know what would happen but every day a little bit better but due to needing the feeding tube for all things nutrition and medicine because he cannot swallow safely means he can’t return to work. Original plan was that he would be in the hospital 5 days and home recovery for 6 weeks. The plan changed due to all the complications.

Tom would like to thank all our friends and family for their unwavering support.

TLDR – Tom had brain surgery to remove the 5cm tumor that was encroached on his optic nerve and had mass effect on his brain stem – things went sideways with major complications post-surgery, and he was on life support for 30 days, had 4 additional surgeries and then went to inpatient rehab to learn how to be a person again. He still has a feeding tube because of the damage to his tongue and swallow function and is physically still recovering from his long hospitalization.