After the initial CT finding, my brain MRI confirmed the presence of a tumor, and I was diagnosed with brain cancer. However, we couldn’t know anything about the tumor until it was taken out. We decided to receive treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I elected for resection of the tumor over just a biopsy of the tumor. Important to note is that the discovery of the tumor was completely incidental. The headaches seem to have no correlation with the tumor, and I never experienced a seizure or any neurological symptoms. The tumor was removed as a complete resection on April 8, 2013, by Dr. Levine, and pathology labeled it is an “anaplastic oligodendroglioma with 1p19q deletion.”
The good news is that this is a treatment-responsive tumor with a clinical history of much better survival than the majority of brain tumors. In May of 2013, I started on chemo for six months, and after my first chemo treatment, my son was born. So as you can imagine, 2013 was a completely crazy year for the Hendrix family. After six months of chemo, I went through six weeks of radiation as well. I finished up before Christmas, and I am currently on the two month MRI scan program.