It started several months ago with the headaches \u2014 blinding assaults from out of the blue that would leave Katherine Brown incapacitated, unable to work or even move, hypersensitive to light and sound.<\/p>\n
She thought she was having migraines. Her primary care physician believed she might be struggling with<\/p>\n
depression or anxiety, so he gave her sample packets of anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants because she had little money and no insurance. He never referred her to a neurologist.<\/p>\n
Nothing touched the pain.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until one horrible night, when her increasingly odd behavior panicked her parents, that Brown was rushed to University Hospital, where doctors finally did a scan of her head. They discovered a cancerous brain tumor the size of a grapefruit \u2014 not the largest tumor that neurosurgeon Dr. David Jimenez had ever seen, \u201cbut way up there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A malignant tumor such as the one crowding Brown\u2019s brain would have meant an automatic death sentence years ago \u2014 and in some less-advanced health care centers, it still would. But her story illustrates what cutting-edge medicine can do in the face of horrific disease and the strides researchers are making in battling malignant brain tumors.<\/p>\n
If the pathology report of her brain tumor reveals it to be of a certain type, Brown may be in line to receive an experimental vaccine that might prevent it from growing back.<\/p>\n
Either way, she\u2019s determined to defy any dim prognosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis cancer is going to have to put up a fight, because I have no intention of giving up,\u201d said Brown, 37, the mother of 7-year-old twins. \u201cKnowing that there was a really high chance for me not to survive the surgery, I really value life a lot more now. I\u2019m going to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown lives in a detached cottage behind her parent\u2019s modest brick home on 2 1\/2 acres near Castroville. She\u2019s a well-known artist and designer, creating collages, assemblages, jewelry and other art with found objects. Before she got sick, she scoured antique and estate sales and traveled to Mexico twice a month to buy objets d\u2019art \u2014 small, artistic pieces \u2014 for her creations and folk art to sell on her thriving online business.<\/p>\n
She was the president and one of the founding members of the local Craft Mafia, a collective of artists\/crafters who come together for networking and support.<\/p>\n
Brown is a warm, friendly and funny woman despite withering fatigue related to her surgery and complications. She moved in behind her parents six years ago so they could help care for her children, two lively youngsters named Brendan and Rihan.<\/p>\n
On a recent morning about a month after her surgery, she sat at the dining room table with her mother, Melinda Brown, 66, a grandmotherly woman with a silver bun who rides around on a scooter and is prone to folksy sayings such as \u201cLord a\u2019 mercy.\u201d They struggle with the machine used to infuse the catheter inserted in Katherine Brown\u2019s upper arm with the strong antibiotics she needs to combat spinal meningitis, which she contracted as a consequence of the surgery.<\/p>\n
Brown is suffering from swelling because of all the medications she\u2019s taking \u2014 nine pills \u2014 and her hands shake noticeably.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gained 10 pounds in the last five days,\u201d she said dejectedly.<\/p>\n
Looking back, she marvels that it took so long for her to accept the fact that she was seriously ill.<\/p>\n
First came the headaches. Then she started growing numb and collapsing \u2014 episodes that were, in fact, seizures. There was the fateful day when she collapsed in the parking lot of a shopping center. Five people passed her by, staring, as she lay on the ground before she was finally able to get to her feet again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really embarrassing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In her professional life as an artist, she had begun struggling with her responsibilities as president of the Craft Mafia.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was supposed to be taking care of business online, and she was just dropping the ball right and left,\u201d said Patti Hinkley, a fellow Craft Mafia member. \u201cA lot of the stuff had to do with memory issues. We didn\u2019t realize there was something wrong with her; we just called it the Katie show. Later, we all felt guilty for talking about her.\u201d<\/p>\n
But most troubling was her erratic behavior, which worsened over time. One night, her parents spied her urinating outside by the front porch of her house, clad only in an old cardigan. Another night, she walked into her parent\u2019s home wearing only her underwear.<\/p>\n
The final straw happened yet another night, when Brown\u2019s father, Ron Brown, noticed there were no lights on in her house and she wasn\u2019t answering her telephone. He walked to the house with Brendan in tow. They found his mother sitting in a puddle of urine, her hands splashing it, while she stared straight ahead, nonresponsive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt scared my son to death,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ron Brown, 68, is a former Air Force drill instructor and training superintendent who once oversaw a 1,000-man squadron. A Lackland AFB physical scientist and doting grandfather, he made a command decision and drove her to the emergency room at University Hospital that night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they showed me the (scan) of her brain tumor, I almost fell on the floor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Surgery was scheduled for the next morning, and Dr. Jimenez, chairman of the neurosurgery department, was called in. Jimenez said her tumor arose from star-shaped cells that create the scaffolding for nerve cells in the brain.<\/p>\n
A high-grade glioblastoma, it\u2019s the worst, most virulent kind of brain tumor. Brown\u2019s was in her right frontal lobe, and the size of it was compressing other parts of her brain. The size indicated that it could have been there for as long as six months to a year, Jimenez said.<\/p>\n
The frontal lobe is considered the \u201cexecutive center,\u201d Jimenez said, \u201cwhere all the higher cognitive functions take place. It controls our ability to reason, to be creative, to understand complex thoughts. It\u2019s also the location for inhibition control. So someone who loses both frontal lobes may become like a little kid. They might take their clothes off and run around.\u201d<\/p>\n
The five-hour surgery was exceedingly delicate. The tumor was close to large blood vessels, and any misstep on Jimenez\u2019s part could have resulted in Brown suffering a stroke, massive bleeding, paralysis, a whole host of woes.<\/p>\n
Jimenez said that when Brown came into the ER she was fidgety and noncommunicative; immediately after the surgery \u201cshe was like a completely different person. I expected her to be out of it, and she was cracking jokes. She remembered my name. I went home that night walking on air.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scans showed that he was able to remove the entire tumor. The only deficit Brown has today is a slight problem with memory; she sometimes forgets what she\u2019s saying in midsentence. Occupational therapy should help with that. Her medical care is being paid for by Medicaid, although her parents have had to pay for prescriptions not covered, to the tune of more than $1,000 so far.<\/p>\n
Brown didn\u2019t even have to lose her hair: Jimenez, taking tips from his wife, a plastic surgeon, does brain surgery without shaving his patient\u2019s scalps.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s lucky in another way, Jimenez said: University Hospital boasts an \u201cM.D. Anderson-type\u201d multidisciplinary program in which all the various professionals who will take care of Brown as she continues with her course of treatment \u2014 chemotherapy and radiation \u2014 work as a team.<\/p>\n
And the Cancer Research and Treatment Center, or CTRC, which the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio owns, holds the presitigious<\/span>\u00a0NCI (National Cancer Institute) designation, meaning Brown will get state-of-the-art care. This includes radiation with a new, one-of-a-kind-for-San Antonio radiation machine that delivers high doses.<\/p>\n Part of the cutting-edge research involves an ongoing second-phase trial of a vaccine for tumors that have a mutation for something called a growth factor receptor.<\/p>\n The vaccine \u201ccould double the length of her survival,\u201d Jimenez said.<\/p>\n Brown, whose grandmother died of a brain tumor, said she\u2019s not afraid of dying.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just not ready, if that makes any sense,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t scare me anymore, but I am concerned about my children. More than anything, I think it\u2019s important to look ahead, just in case.\u201d<\/p>\n She knows her parents are growing older and might struggle to keep up with her two growing kids, who have been given just the vague outlines of what\u2019s happening to their mother. The father of her twins, Joe Carty, is a Kerrville man who has defied odds by living well beyond his own prognosis after being diagnosed with stage-four liver cancer and colon cancer.<\/p>\n Brown said Carty is a loving, involved father, but his future is precarious as well. So she has talked to his brother and sister, who live in Ireland and have grown kids, about whether they\u2019d be willing to raise Brendan and Rihan, if it should come to that.<\/p>\n But now, she\u2019s focused on the present and overcoming the odds.<\/p>\n \u201cThey told Joe he only had three to six months, and that was three years ago,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are miracles.\u201d ~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It started several months ago with the headaches \u2014 blinding assaults from out of the blue that would leave Katherine Brown incapacitated, unable to work or even move, hypersensitive to light and sound. She thought she was having migraines. Her primary care physician believed she might be struggling with depression or anxiety, so he gave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPrecarious futures<\/h3>\n