Jen's Cancer Fight Message Board: May 2017

As I mentioned prior to Jen's last stable scan, Jen had three seizures the week before the scan. She did have 1 more seizure two days following the scan. She then went three weeks without any seizures until this last Sunday when she had two more. They were all small seizures. Unfortunately, her appointment with her seizure specialist at UCLA was moved (for the second time), so we are now about a month away from being able to get in to see anyone in that department. Hopefully, she will remain seizure free until then. Other than the three small seizures since I last blogged, Jen has been doing well. She has had increasing issues with insomnia which contributes to her fatigue. Jen doesn't bounce back as quickly as most of us when she has trouble getting a good night's sleep. Jen's next scan is on June 15th.

I usually try to remind everyone in the beginning of the month that May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month - Go Gray for May! Sorry for just now getting to this - it is still May though. There will be about 80,000 new diagnoses of Brain Cancer this year in the US alone. About every 32 minutes a man, woman, or child dies from brain cancer. Hopefully, an impact can be made and these numbers can be reduced. I have included some important links for Brain Cancer awareness and information for those who are interested.

http://www.abta.org

http://braintumor.org/

https://virtualtrials.com/index.cfm

https://virtualtrials.com/musella.cfm

In November of this year, there is a walk for Brain Cancer in Los Angeles and Jen wants to organize a team this year to raise money. I will post the details later on - I hope we can get a large number of people from LA together to support Jen. The date is Saturday, November 4th, so save the date!

We have actually been up to a lot in the last 2 months.

In the beginning of March, we attended our third weekend long Brain Tumor Conference at UCLA. As always, this was insightful and a great source of comradery.

We also managed to get in a 3 day vacation in mid March when we went to Anza Borrego where they were experiencing a super bloom of wildflowers due to all the recent rain in California. It was perhaps the best display they have had in about 20 years and we were fortunate to be able to go see it at it's peak. It was amazing and Jen even managed to do about a 2 mile hike in the desert heat over uneven ground. About 2 weeks later we went to the California Poppy Reserve for their peak. Jen loves the wildflowers, unfortunately her allergies do not. She has had her worst allergy season in decades due to all the abundant blooming this year. She has tried taking an antihistamine on several occasions, but we have noticed a possible correlation between her taking one and her seizures. Although uncommon, some of the modern antihistamines can apparently lower the seizure threshold in some people. It may just be coincidental, but just in case Jen has stopped taking anything other than eye drops. We plan to discuss this when we finally get in to see the seizure specialist.

We also managed to take in a few concerts. As promised, here are some photos - there are a lot.