Media Contact: Sandra VanE-mail: [email protected]Telephone: 1-800-880-2397
LOS ANGELES (Feb. 13, 2002) -- Near the end of 1999, Kansas City, Mo., resident Walter Canady noticed a slight twitch in the little finger of his left hand.
"I just had a little jitter in my left pinky finger. I thought it was a nerve. That's what early doctors were telling me at the time. As time progressed, my jitters became worse," says Canady, now 22 and the father of a 2-year-old son.
Although the first rounds of doctor visits proved inconclusive, the twitches persisted. Canady eventually was referred to a neurologist who performed an examination and was preparing to send him home when a spasm struck. The doctor ordered an MRI, which showed a mass on the right side of Canady's brain in the motor cortex controlling the left side of the body.
By this time, the summer of 2001, the spasms would shoot up Canady's arm, around his shoulder and up to the back of his ear. Sometimes his eyelid would move. "It was like a spasm I couldn't control. It didn't hurt at all. Then I got seizures," Canady recalls.
In August 2001, a team of physicians and a neurosurgeon performed additional procedures to determine the dimensions of the tumor and its proximity to vital areas of the motor cortex. At the conclusion of the tests, Canady says, they told him surgery was not an option. Instead, they would develop an appropriate treatment plan after performing a biopsy to define the type of cells that comprised the tumor.
The day after the biopsy, Canady was shaken by a grand mal seizure that left him unconscious for about 10 minutes. On Sept. 6, his 22nd birthday, he learned that he had a malignant brain tumor called an anaplastic astrocytoma or a Grade III astrocytoma.
Until this time, he had believed the tumor to be benign, but anaplastic astrocytomas have tentacle-like projections that grow into nearby tissue. Depending on the tumor's size and location, these projections make complete surgical removal extremely difficult or impossible. And because any remaining cancer cells multiply, recurrence is common. Therefore, even if surgery is attempted, radiation therapy or chemotherapy or a combination will be employed to try to kill any renegade cells.
During a visit with one of his doctors, Canady mentioned that after his medical crisis was over, he might move to southern California. Most of his immediate family is in Kansas City, but his father lives in Los Angeles.
"That's when he brought to my attention that there's a great surgeon there by the name of Dr. Black. He gave me the name of the hospital and showed me the information on the Internet," says Canady. "I gave my father a call."
His father called a friend who called a friend about Canady's plight. Before long, Dr. Black and members of the Institute's clinical team reviewed his MRI images and medical records. The Institute's neurosurgeons and their staff provide a scan review service to make it easy for out-of-state patients to submit their images and find out if they might benefit from coming to Cedars-Sinai. Of those who send their scans, about 100 patients with brain tumors come to the Neurosurgical Institute for surgery each year.
Canady, who believed "only rich people go to Cedars-Sinai," was surprised when he received word to come to Los Angeles. "That's how much I'm appreciative of Dr. Black. I thought that was like one of those high-class hospitals. I didn't think I was going to get in."
On Dec. 4, 2001, Dr. Black headed a team that used a microscope and sophisticated MRI guidance to surgically remove the tumor. Although anaplastic astrocytomas are aggressive and they tend to recur, Canady has several factors working in his favor, according to Dr. Black.
"Walter is a young man, and we find that young people tend to have better survival rates than older people who have a tumor of the same type at the same stage. Fortunately, too, the tumor was diagnosed and treated while it was a Grade III astrocytoma. Had it progressed to Grade IV, called a glioblastoma multiforme, the outlook would have been much less optimistic," says Dr. Black. "Also, since the surgery, Walter's MRI images indicate that the tumor was completely resected, a key factor for a good prognosis."
"My doctor told me this is just the beginning" of the battle to defeat the cancer, said Canady, who is back in Kansas City where specialists at two hospitals are administering radiation and chemotherapy to destroy any remaining tumor cells. In addition to traveling from one hospital to another, Canady has blood drawn every week.
"It has been a drastic change. The way I used to live, I was out all the time doing whatever, working and doing just a whole bunch of nothing. And I thank the Lord for slowing me down. I have a chance to look at things at a slower pace now. It'll teach me how to have patience," he says.
He is trying to face the challenging times with humor, believing that keeping his spirits up will strengthen his family and friends and enhance his recovery. Even so, dealing with a malignant brain tumor at a young age has not been easy. "He (Dr. Black) has really changed my whole life around for me," Canady says. "I was stressing to the point that I didn't know what to do."
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