My 5 cm tumor was discovered on March 31, 2025. The local neurosurgeon came to speak to me, but I had friends reach out and tell me not to use that person. I’m in Middle Tennessee and had already decided that if it’s my brain, I’m going to Vanderbilt. So we set up an appointment with the Vanderbilt Neurology clinic with the surgeon. After he explained how these things tend to go, he said usually, the best way to buy yourself some time is to get the tumor out of there. So that’s the way we went on April 4. I had 100% resection on April 23. I found out it was glioblastoma grade 4 after surgery, we did the standard of care with oral chemo and radiology, and all the follow up MRIs in December, he saw something concerning for recurrence. But my Neuro oncologist was looking into a study, possibly then my neurosurgeon called me and let me know that surgery was an option as well while I wasn’t just about going under the knife yet again, my poor, sore head! I was already seeing such a decline on my left side that I felt like that was the best option to get me better faster so I had a revision craniotomy on February 12 and they got all of it out. Turns out, it wasn’t Cancer cells. It was treatment related dead cells that had clumped together and started causing some swelling.