Symptoms often mimic other conditions

B2

By Cheryl Clock
THE CANADIAN PRESS

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ST. CATHARINES, Ont. - It grew silently. Steadily. The intruder living inside her head gave only a few clues about its existence. There was an unexplained fall. Headaches. Some blurry vision. An occasional tingling feeling in her arm and leg.

At first, the clues were vague. Nothing so obvious that doctors would immediately be led to the intruder.

Her journey, she believes, began back in 2003. Claire Duthie, a mother of two adult boys, was washing dishes in the kitchen of her Niagara Falls, Ont., home. Her left side suddenly gave out. She fell to the floor.

Once in a while, she would endure a bad headache. But it wasn't until three years later, in June 2006, that she began to feel an odd sort of tingling on her left side. The feeling travelled from her hand to her elbow, and from her foot to her knee.

It didn't happen all the time. Just enough to make her curious. And worried.

When she noticed her eyes were a little blurry, she saw an optometrist. She thought she might need glasses, but her eyes seemed fine.

When the tingling episodes became more frequent, she went back to her family doctor. Duthie started writing everything down on paper. Date. Time. And what happened.

She saw a neurologist and had a CT scan. "Something's there," she was told. Then, in November 2006, came the MRI.

She remembers hearing a lot of big words as she sat in her neurologist's office.

"Are you telling me I have a brain tumour?" she asked him. His answer was simple: "Yes." And it was cancer.

She wasn't scared, though. "I have a higher power," she thought.

Her surgery to remove the tumour was in December 2006 at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

By the time the neurosurgeon cut it out, it was the size of a plum.

On the right side of her head, he cut out a perfect C-shaped segment of her skull. And there it was. A Grade 2 astrocytoma. Just above her ear, entwined with a part of her brain that controlled motor skills.

The surgeon got most of it. The remainder was obliterated by 13 months of oral chemotherapy.

The cancer had not spread. Duthie was left with a limp in her left leg and walks with a cane.

"I'm more conscious of just living for today," says Duthie.

"I wake up in the morning and I think, all right, another day."

She brings her immense appreciation for life to a newly formed Niagara support group for people living with a brain tumour. Duthie leads the group, a chapter of the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada, along with 43-year-old Kellie Kirkwood, a St. Catharines, Ont., mother who had a benign tumour removed last year.

Together they offer support to a group of people, who meet once a month, creating a comforting atmosphere where people can share experiences and knowledge. There are similar support groups for patients and family members across Canada.

The Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada estimates there are about 55,000 Canadians living with a brain tumour. About 10,000 will be diagnosed every year.

There are more than 120 different types of brain tumours. A primary brain tumour -- a growth that originates in the brain -- can be benign or cancerous. And there are more people living with metastatic brain tumours -- cancer that originates in other areas of the body that eventually spreads to the brain -- as people with cancer are now living longer.

Early diagnosis is key but can be challenging, says Paul Mitchell, community relations officer with the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada.

Symptoms might initially mimic other conditions, like stress or depression. Duthie thought she was having small strokes, and doctors speculated that she might have multiple sclerosis.

A benign tumour grows slowly and the brain can be quite accommodating. Patients are often startled by the size and length of time a tumour has been growing in their head before it's detected. Some tumours reach grapefruit size before they cause enough symptoms to get noticed, says Mitchell.

Typically, the tumour might press against tissue that affects eyesight or motor skills, or the person might experience a major health event, like a seizure.

Cancerous tumours usually grow much more quickly and the signs are more pronounced.

Advances in research, technology and treatment improve survival, says Mitchell.

"Prognosis is so much better now than it was even a few years ago," he says.

Years ago, radiation was delivered to pretty much the entire head. These days, it targets just the tumour, he says.

Researchers are also learning about the complicated nature of brain tumours. Often the complex makeup of a tumour is specific to the person, based somewhat on genetics. And within the tumour, there are often different types of cancer cells, says Mitchell.

"It's a very complicated type of disease," he says.

What this all means is that treatments are often customized to a specific person. And researchers have found that a combination of radiation and chemotherapy often has a better result than either one alone, says Mitchell.

Kirkwood's tumour was discovered by a fluke. She'd been having headaches and some trouble with her vision. The cause, she thought, was from working at a computer without wearing her glasses.

It wasn't until she broke her nose at work one day and needed a CT scan that her tumour was spotted.

By then, it was 6.5 centimetres, growing on her pituitary gland and pressing against her ocular nerve.

It could have made her blind.

She wasn't nearly as calm as Duthie. "Absolutely terrified," she says of the diagnosis.

Kirkwood's tumour was removed in August 2007. The neurosurgeon at Hamilton General inserted a long, slender instrument up her nose. He cut off pieces of the mass and pulled them out through her nose.

Her eyesight was saved. And there's no sign of the tumour.

Duthie's story, too, has a good ending. In June, she sat once again in her neurosurgeon's office and looked at a black and white picture of her brain on his computer screen.

There was no sign of the tumour.

"It was gone," she says. "I was over the moon."

She hugged her two friends who had come with her to the appointment. Then she hugged her doctor.

"Now I could really believe it," she says. "It was gone."