Sadie Jo Smokey
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 21 2008 11:59 am
"Oh snap!" a student breathes, startled as the image on the monitor switches from a PowerPoint presentation of multicolored grids to a brain surgery in progress.
"Welcome to the OR," said Dr. Adrienne Scheck, a senior staff scientist at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.
Two dozen members of Students Supporting Brain Tumor Research gaze at the large screen at the front of the Barrow Telepresence Conference Room.
They see an operating room and its occupants: an anesthesiologist, scrub technicians, the neurosurgeon looking into an operating microscope. A camera in the medical equipment provides a detailed view of the brain.
Illuminated by a bright light, the students see the living organ, the fluids and a jaw tool pulling out bits of soft tumor.
While the neurosurgical operating room is far on the other side of the St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center campus, the students watch and ask questions as if standing over the surgeon's shoulder.
The group sees the outline of the patient draped in blue. One of the surgeons explains that the male patient is laying face down on the operating table. This is the second surgery in less than eight months to remove the large, aggressive growing glial blastoma tumor.
While surgery and other treatments may provide time and quality of life, they will not "cure" the patient, who generously shared his Presidents Day surgery with the students.
Risa Isard, 18, a senior at Shadow Mountain High School in northeast Phoenix, said the aggressive nature of the tumor gave her pause.
"It's hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that the patient is going to die from the tumor, that there's no survival rate," Isard said. "We're asking so many questions that they don't know the answer to. It's not something we're used to in this day and age, 'We don't know' or 'We don't have a cure' or 'We don't have an answer.' "
Part of the Students Supporting Brain Tumor Research fundraising efforts pays for the salary of a post-graduate researcher at Barrow Neurological Institute. Scheck reminded the students that progress is being made.
"The effort you put into this is enormous and has an impact on the research we do," Scheck said.
Presently the institute is working on a diet-based therapy that may inhibit the growth of tumors and lessen seizures. A second project involves the Chinese medicinal herb Scutellaria baicalensis, nicknamed "scut" that targets tumor cells.
The club's annual walkathon will start at noon Saturday at Pinnacle High School in Phoenix. Details: ssbtr.org.
My child is a stage 3
My child is a stage 3 Neuroblasoma survivor, She has had 2 spine surgeries and lost some hearing, but is active and healthy, she is a junioe in high school and honor student, competitive dancer and cheerleader, 20 years ago she may have died from her diagnosis. I thnk if we keep the research going and the fundraising we all can have hope for a boost in the survival rate. My daughter has lost friends to brain tumors and it a very devastating diagnosis, I pray not only for the children with cancer , but thier parents, who are also in thier own way a "survivor"