Ryan’s Glioblastoma (brain cancer) Treatment

While on a friend trip to New Orleans, over thanksgiving weekend, my husband, Ryan Hickman, suffered a terrifying seizure.

The seizure itself, which we believed to be random at the time, and possibly caused from dehydration (or so I thought), turned out to not be random at all.

Once EMTs dropped us off at the hospital, the ER staff began running tests and scheduling MRIs and CT scans, to determine what caused the seizure.

In addition to the seizure, Ryan fell HARD - face first out of his seat, which gave him nasty bump, busted lip, and a pretty cool “Harry Potter”forehead scar. 

After these scans were completed, the doctors informed us that the seizure was actually caused by a 5cm mass in his right frontal lobe in his brain. A brain tumor. We spent Sunday-Friday in the ICU at the hospital in New Orleans, monitoring Ryan and coming up with a plan of action - the doctors also wanted to make sure he was going to be okay to travel. Thankfully, that Friday we were discharged and on our way home. 

The next step was getting into our new hospital, Barnes Jewish, and meeting our new Neurosurgeon and Neurologist. 

As of today, a month and a half later, we still don’t know exactly know what it is, but the neurosurgeon at Barnes Jewish believes it to be a low grade, glioma. We still can’t check off whether it’s cancerous or non-cancerous, but we recently found out that it did grow in size since the last MRI in New Orleans. The doctor mentioned this could be a sign of being malignant.

Ryan was finally scheduled for a craniotomy on Thursday, January 13th. We have a pre-op appointment Tuesday, January 11th, to review everything we need to know going into surgery. 

Ryan will most likely be at Barnes Jewish Thursday-Monday recovering and then will have 6 full weeks of sleeping, eating, and healing.

There is a long road ahead of us, and we both are trying to mentally and financially prepare.

All in all, the financial strain of the scans, tests, ambulance rides, 6 days in the ICU, and everything else yet to come - brain surgery, post-op stay in the ICU, and 6 weeks of recovery… has us feeling unprepared. Although, how can anyone be prepared for news like that? 

Keep Ryan in your thoughts and prayers. Any help is so incredibly appreciated ❤️