Help Reece and his battle against brain cancer.

I am fundraising for my Fiancé, Reece Brown. He is 23 years old, he was healthy, extremely active and enjoying his life in the mountains until May 12th, 2019. We returned back home to Leadville from our week long road trip to San Diego.  Reece drove us home which was a 15 hour drive. The following day, Reece had a grand mal seizure in our home. He was cooking dinner and had felt light headed and right as this happened he was on the floor experiencing his first ever seizure.

The ambulance arrived and took him to St. Vincent hospital down the road from us. Reece lost consciousness for 15 minutes from the moment he fell and seized until he woke up in the hospital. Dr. Lisa Zwerdlinger was our attending Doctor, she ordered a CT scan right away, and after the scan was complete she came to us with the unfortunate news that there was a large mass on the right frontal lobe of his brain. Dr. Zwerdlinger said the hospital she issending us to is the best in the state to take care of Reece further. We were taken immediately  in the ambulance down to Denver, to the UCHealth Anschutz Center. 

Reece was in the Neuro ICU for 3 days, during that time he had a standard MRI and a FMRI. The FMRI was to get a better idea of where his brain activity was located, speech, motor skills, sensation, etc. They referred to it as brain mapping. Dr. Ormond is the surgeon who reviewed the MRI's and informed us that the tumor was fairly large, almost equivalent to a tennis ball and it reached the point where it  pushed so hard on brain which caused his seizure. The good news from the MRI's was that his speech and motor skills were primarily focused on his left side rather than the right. Dr. Ormond suggested doing an awake craniotomy to increase the chances of getting most if not all of the tumor out. Reece was extremely nervous about the idea but liked his chances of getting this tumor out completely. His surgery was scheduled for May 24th, and then pushed back to June 3rd. 

Reece's surgery was successful as Dr. Ormond was able to remove about 90% of the tumor. He said the remainder could've possibly paralyzed Reece on his left side and he did not want to take the risk. They thought the tumor was benign and a round of chemo and radiation would most likely get the rest of the tumor. Until the pathology tests came back a few weeks later.

Reece's tumor is cancerous, he has a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma. There is no cure for this as of today. He completed his 6 weeks of chemo and radiation at the Shaw Center in Edwards a few weeks ago. His MRI last week, showed the cancer and tumor reacted very well to chemo and radiation and his tumor has slightly shrunk as well.
His next course of treatment starts next week and he will be doing chemo for the first 5 days of every month for the next year. We will be meeting his oncologist Dr. Ney once a month in Denver and Reece will have an MRI every 2 months for the next year while doing chemo. 

Reece's world has been turned upside down, he cannot work for the time being. He is physically and mentally exhausted from the medications and coming off of medications. He cannot do the everyday activities he used to do. We have come down to only my income for now, we have medical bills to pay, rent, and more. Anything helps.

Thank you so much for taking time to read on Reece's current situation. Seeing your loved one take on Cancer is extremely overwhelming, please keep Reece in your thoughts!


Thank you,
Sasha