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| Meningioma: Success Stories |
Marc P., Oklahoma City, OK
Our nightmare began in Feb of 2002 when my husband, Marc, was diagnosed with a meningioma the size of a man’s fist on his brain stem. The diagnosis was bleak from the beginning and he was instructed to get his affairs in order.
After sending his MRI to many top notch hospitals and Neurosurgeons and being turned down we were, to say the least, very worried about the outcome. We had received little encouragement from our Drs in Oklahoma City.
As a last ditch effort and just days before he was scheduled for a craniotomy, I decided to spend one more all nighter on the internet. I googled every word I could think of and googled words I was just learning. I arrived, somehow at the SBI website and started reading about Dr. Shahinian. I was amazed and encouraged by what I read so I shot off an email to them in the early morning hours. Feeling pretty good at that point, I decided to get a few hours of sleep knowing that I would be awakened early by our young son, who was the main reason I was in a battle to save my husband’s life. We knew when we had our Son at 40 that we risked the chance of having a shorter time with him but this was just too early for him to lose his Daddy.
Fairly early, I received a call from the Skull Base Institute requesting that I overnight the MRI to them. We had his surgery scheduled in OKC in just 5 days and we needed answers quick, they knew this from my email. We overnighted the MRI that day and by the next morning we received the call back saying that the Dr. felt he could indeed remove this tumor successfully with minimum damage. I couldn’t believe what I heard and asked if they would please have Dr. Shahinian call us himself.
That evening, our friends were at our house waiting to take us out to dinner for my birthday. We invited them in when they arrived. We didn’t want to miss the call from the Dr. and in just a few minutes the phone rang. Everyone picked up extensions so they could hear what the Dr. had to say. Everyone was equally encouraged and after we hung up the phone went on to celebrate not just my birthday but the hope that we finally felt after talking to Dr. Shahinian. He assured my husband that he would "live to fish with his Grandson".
In May of that year, our family and our friends made the trip to California, and had endoscopic brain surgery in 5 days. The outcome was better than we had imagined. Even though my husband’s brain tumor had calcified, the Dr. was able to remove most of it leaving only the tail which was attached to his brain stem. After a year, we expected that it might grow back. It did and we repeated the surgery the next year following up with gamma knife in Oxnard about 8 months later.
We have forged a forever relationship with Dr. Shahinian. We feel like he is our family and we know we can personally call him or email him anytime. He knows us and the name of our children.
We travel to California now to take MRIs and to visit him at times and to vacation. It has been 10 years since my husband was first diagnosed. Our Son is now 15 and I have a darling picture of my husband fishing on the snowy banks of a river in Estes Park Colorado with our 5 year old grandson, Jaden.
Thank you Dr. Shahinian and your staff for 10 years!
Wife of Mark P.
Oklahoma City, OK
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