On June 21st of this year, Steve started having itchy, watery eyes and massive headaches that would not go away. That was on a Saturday, and the headaches continued through the next week. He went to work Monday the 23rd, and his eyes started getting worse.

He went to a Centra Care clinic that afternoon and was misdiagnosed with conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye, in both eyes. He was given antibiotics and eye drops to take and was out of work most of that week.

He returned to work Friday as he began to feel a little better until his meds and eye drops began to run out. Through the course of that week, I started noticing unusual things about him. He had brain fog and wasn’t making much sense when you talked to him. He would talk in circles, he had hearing loss, and then I started seeing facial droop but never realized that’s what it was. What I noticed instead was that it appeared he was blinking his right eye a lot. What I failed to notice was he wasn’t blinking his right eye at all.

So, he returned to work Friday the 27th but still wasn’t feeling much better. He complained of pressure behind his eyes. The weekend came and went, but he wasn’t any better but still served baptism that Sunday.

That Monday, he asked me to call his PCP to see if they would fill scripts again. The PCP said no, he needs to be seen by the eye doctor if he wasn’t any better. He had been experiencing blurred and double vision, which I later learned had occurred a few days prior, and he had been driving and going to work like that.

He finally told me that Monday what was going on. I called his eye doctor and got him in to be seen the next day.

I had told Steve that night that I felt he had a mild stroke, and he agreed with me and said he felt himself drool when he brushed his teeth.

So the eye doctor suspected Steve either had a stroke or Bell’s palsy. I’d never heard of Bell’s palsy before, and of course, I had to Google it. The eye doctor told us to get him to the hospital, but I never sensed the urgency. We ended up taking him back to Centra Care. I pulled up where you drop off patients and told him to wait in the car. I told the lady at the front desk everything that was going on. She gets up from her desk and said she’d be right back. I look around to see a doctor and two nurses rushing towards me and ask, “Where’s your husband?” I motioned to the car. They checked his blood pressure, which was extremely high, and did neurological tests on him and said, “Get him to a hospital.”

I ended up taking him to a standalone ER I thought was the hospital. They did a CAT scan of his brain and said he had a large mass on his brain and swelling, and the doctor could not believe how well Steve was functioning. They again said he was going to be admitted to the hospital and was going by ambulance. I was so confused as I thought he was at the hospital.

I went home to feed the dog, eat, and shower. When I got to the hospital and saw he was in ICU, I rushed through the doors as I thought they were doing emergency surgery, but that didn’t occur until the next morning.

Before his surgery, they did an MRI to get a clearer picture of what they were dealing with. I had a friend from church that volunteered to come stay with me for two days while Steve was in surgery and in ICU as she told me she was not going to let me go through this alone. God sent her to be with me as her son-in-law had been diagnosed with the same type of cancer just two years prior.

His first surgery was on July 3rd. The MRI showed there were actually two tumors. One was fairly small on the top of his head. The other one was on the left side and 4 cm in length and had been pushing his brain to the side. We were told if it had moved any further, it would have killed him. It was also pressing down on the nerves in the left side of his face, causing paralysis.

We were told if this was confined to the brain, they would take them both, but if not, they would leave the small one and then do radiation to shrink it. So the doctor already suspected it was cancer.

A biopsy was done during his surgery, which was 4 hours long, and the pathology report stated it was metastatic, which meant it was coming from somewhere else.

They suspected it was from his lungs as he had quit smoking a year ago March, and his CT scan last year showed they were full of nodules.

So only the larger tumor got removed. While in ICU, we had friends from church stop by, and we formed a prayer circle and laid our hands on Steve’s chest and prayed. The next day, a CT scan showed the nodules were all gone!

Steve got released on Sunday, July 6th, and while he was recovering, his chief complaint was burning eyes. So his neurosurgeon said to go back to the eye doctor. I had wanted to say thank you to the eye doctor anyway for telling us to get to the hospital. While we were there, we explained to the lady at the front desk everything that occurred 12 days prior, and a couple overheard us and wanted to know more about our story. So before we left, the couple asked if they could pray over us. What a blessing that was.

While he was recovering for two weeks, a second biopsy was done through the oncologist, and we got the devastating news that this was coming from the brain, and he had glioblastoma, a very rare form of cancer that there is no cure for in the US, but there are some clinical trials in Australia.

The next week, he started radiation and chemotherapy, and on day 4, Steve was feeling pretty good, and we got bad news again that he was going back to surgery to remove the smaller tumor. This decision was made after the tumor board met, and a third biopsy came back from the University of Michigan that this was glioblastoma. So his second surgery occurred on Tuesday, July 29th. They not only removed the smaller tumor but went back into the first surgical site to take out recurring cells. Two days later, he was released. That night, he got sick, and the next day, his right arm started to swell. I took him back to the ER, where he went back to the hospital again by ambulance. They did an ultrasound and found a large blood clot in his right arm and neck, which is a scary situation either way. It was dangerous to give him blood thinners because of his recent surgery, as he could have a brain bleed and hemorrhage to death or have a stroke or a heart attack. If they didn’t do the blood thinners, the clot would kill him. So he got released again on Sunday and is now recovering from surgery number two and will start radiation and chemo all over again for 30 treatments.

Steve was our breadwinner and has not worked since July 1st and has no short or long-term benefits, so we have been reduced to one income. His insurance is through my work, and we have medical bills on top of trying to meet our everyday needs. I have applied for his social security disability benefits and was told it is getting approved but will take 4 to 6 months to get any benefits. We are in need of help and have a long road ahead of us.