Beth's Story  
     
  I have a benign brain tumour on my optic nerve. As a result of this, I am visually impaired. I find it  
  difficult to process information if it comes at me too quickly, and I have a bad short term memory,  
  which is the reason I often forget things.  
     
  I was born on August 5, 1987. When I was five months old, my parents noticed that something was  
  wrong. My eyes had a side-to-side movement called nystagmus. When I was eight months old, I was  
  diagnosed with a glioma on my optic nerve. Over the next few months, I had a couple of surgeries.  
  One was to put a shunt on the right side of my head for draining out fluid, and another was for  
  inserting an omaya on the other side. Things got better for me after that, however, and just after  
  my first birthday I was allowed to go home.  
     
  For the next ten years, everything was stable. In autumn of 1998, however, things began to change.  
  I started having short absence seizures. I would often feel very tired during the day, and I was not  
  hungry at mealtimes. A CAT scan revealed that my tumour had grown. That fall, I had some surgery  
  to put another shunt in, this one on my left side. The surgery went well, but it did not help. So in  
  April 1999, I started a round of monthly chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumour. I received  
  doses of vincristine and carboplatin. For eighteen months, I went in once a month for chemo  
  treatments.They did make me feel better. I started eating a little better, felt more energetic, and had  
  fewer seizures. However, the results were not what my parents and I had hoped for. I still did not  
  feel totally energetic, my appetite was still a little low, and I continued to have seizures.  
     
 

In spring 2001 the tumour started to grow again. Once again I was not hungry, had no energy, and

 
  started having seizures. At this point I began to have grand mal seizures as well as absence ones.  
  So I started a weekly round of chemotherapy. This time I was given doses of vinblastine. This chemo  
  worked much better than the one before. The tumour shrank faster, the number of seizures I was  
having decreased drastically, and my appetite and energy came back sooner. My parents and I were  
very pleased with the results we were seeing, and in December 2002 I finished my second round of  
chemotherapy.  
   
I have not had any chemotherapy treatments since 2002. I do continue to have absence seizures  
once in a while, in spite of surgeries and daily medications that my doctors have tried. However, my  
experiences with chemotherapy have improved my health in many ways, including energy levels and  
appetite, and have taught me a lot about being a cancer survivor.  
   
Rebounders Canada has changed my life in many ways. It has shown that there are other people out  
  there who have been through similar experiences as me, and that there are many services and people  
who are willing to help. But most of all, it has been a great way to make new friends.  
   
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