Dee’s Journey

Dee’s Story

Dee's story began when he was 18 months old on Nov 7 2001 in my Mama's back yard. We were getting in the car to go to Walmart and he was standing in front of the car just looking, I sort of got upset and said get in this car, his daddy said no, something isn’t right and went to pick him up and he collapsed in his daddy's arms. We live in Opp so I could get to the hospital ER faster than a ambulance. They did a CAT scan, and saw something in the brain, they put us on an ambulance to Southeast Hospital in Dothan where they did a brain biopsy , he stayed a week in Dothan and by Dec 5 2001 had his first brain surgery in Birmingham at Children's hospital. We did several chemotherapy drugs for a couple of years then the cancer came back when he was 5 (same kind anaplastic oligodendroglioma grade 3 in the brain) did brain surgery again then 33 rounds of high dose brain radiation and chemo for several years and he went 13 years stable with no cancer.. which brings us to now... A little over 2 months ago, closer to 3 months now Dee started having headaches every few days, they kept getting worse lasting longer til they were not even going away (he confined himself inside completely). I had taken him to the doctor several times until I was frustrated with the situation. I thought it was allergies or even migraine headaches so I treated him for all that even made an appointment with an allergist to test to see was he allergic to anything in particular. In the meantime Dr Bang had Opp Hospital do a CT scan after Dee got a nice round dime size lump on his head above his old brain surgery incision. The Opp radiologist said it was scar tissue from those brain surgeries 15yrs ago, I refused to believe that because it was so nice and round and so many years had passed. He kept hurting and now having blurred vision and unbalanced walking at times and constantly complaining. I asked for a second opinion thinking maybe it was like a cyst on his head so we went to Dr Amanda Day a dermatologist in Enterprise that agreed with Opp Hospital radiologist it was only scar tissue. So instead of my believing my son completely I told him these 2 doctors can't be wrong we would wait until that allergist appointment and see what he thinks. By this time the lump is nickel size and Dee woke up the Monday morning after Mother's Day and said I see 20 fingers mama. Right then I said we are going to Dr Bang. Dr Bang said we tried everything all we can do is Birmingham and I said let's go. We came thru children's hospital ER they did a CT scan just like Opp hospital and said a blind man could see the tumor on his brain. It's was about 1 am Tuesday morning then. They put us in a room and by lunch did emergency brain surgery which was supposed to last 6 hrs but ended up lasting 8hrs because his blood pressure was running high so they did and ultrasound then CT of his kidneys and said he had a golf ball size tumor on the left kidney and both kidneys filled full of 1cm tumors which brings us here today in the hospital just had kidney surgery yesterday and brain surgery 2 weeks ago. Go back an read Dee's Journey posts to catch up from there. (This is the condensed version)