Punching the Bucket List

Yes, we did. My wife and I went to the Olympics (don’t tell the kids that their inheritance has shrunk significantly).

We went for two reasons. First, we love the Olympics, all of it. We love the pageantry, the events, the camaraderie and the multinational environment.

The second reason is that, given my recent health history, we thought that seeing the Olympics sooner than later was a good thing.

I felt even better about going this year when I heard Mark D. Johnson (M.D., Ph.D., Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School) speak at the recent ABTA conference. My notes tell me that he said that meningioma tumors reoccur in about 10 – 15% of the cases. I am not crazy about those odds as I have a medical history of snatching defeat from the gaping jaws of victory.

I then visited the ABTA site and read that “multiple meningiomas occur in 5% to 15% of patients”, which is only slightly lower than my little league batting average.  (Ok, this is a lie.  My little league batting average was a lot lower.)

After mulling all that over, my sense is that those of us battling serious illness of any shape and size should do a bit more carpe diem. I have no idea what the future holds, but I’m convinced that now is not the time to put off taking that vacation we’ve been lusting over for years, visiting that restaurant we’d love to visit except that it costs mucho buckeroos or calling my old roommate with health problems whom I haven’t called in way too long.

I am trying, with limited success, to enjoy every day for what it is because I know that one day, the days won’t be that enjoyable.

John

PS – Yes, we’ve already booked next year’s vacation.

“Better Than Gold: The Morgan Rathke Story*”

While the Olympics are fresh in our mind, I wanted to relate this story of an Illinois girl who dreamed about Olympic gold and was derailed by a brain tumor.

According to the article on the Huffington Post website, "Morgan Rathke of Illinois was tearing up the gym in 2005. At 13 years of age, she’d been training in gymnastics for more than a decade, along the way collecting ten national titles and dreams of Olympic gold.

But then came the dizzy spells, and the headaches, and the vomiting -- and, to her parents’ horror, the most dreaded diagnosis of all: medulloblastoma, the most common form of deadly brain tumor that a child can develop. Overnight, Morgan’s battle to compete at the Olympics games gave way to a more sobering assignment: the fight for her life."

Well, no kidding, we're talking medulloblastoma.

Strangely and wonderfully, the story has a happy ending. You can read about it at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/marlo-thomas-amazing-children-morgan-rathke_n_1756179.html

*This is the headline from the Huffington Post article which captures the essence of the story better than anything I could write.

Olympian Shannon Miller & Cancer

Given the Olympics, I just reread the Planet Cancer posting about Olympian Shannon Miller entitled “Shannon Miller, Most-Decorated U.S. Gymnast, Motivates Fans by Documenting Her (cancer) Treatment.” The posting is about a year old, but well worth reading: http://www.planetcancerbook.com/shannon-miller-most-decorated-us-gymnast-uses

This youtube video is only five months old and a nice update.

Special Olympic Edition: Mental, Physical Training for Olympic Volleyball

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about Beach-volleyball star Kerri Walsh-Jennings and her teammate Misty May-Treanor who have dominated the sport for more than a decade, capturing gold medals at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics.

What I found interesting in the article was that Ms. Walsh-Jennings started a brain-training program from Los Angeles-based Neurotopia in preparation for this year’s Olympics. "My training has always focused on physical agility but brain training helps sharpen my mental agility as well," she says.

According to the article, the company says it has had more than 1,500 athletes complete an evaluation, which identifies an athlete's strengths and weaknesses, and about 25% have completed a full training program. Over the past 18 months, "we have evaluated 61 Olympians and we anticipate 10 individuals and several teams to be competing in London," says Neurotopia Chief Science Officer Leslie Sherlin.

The article states that Ms. Walsh-Jennings, who started using Neurotopia earlier this year, does a double session, which lasts 90 minutes, two times a week. While wearing a brain wave sensor headset, she controls a videogame with her brain. A technician monitors her brain activities and may provide coaching or adjusts thresholds to continually challenge her. “It’s a lot less physical than my other workouts, but in some ways equally challenging,” she says.

This sounds a lot like the NeuroSky Technology that I wrote about on July 9^th in which one plays a video game by merely using your brain, i.e. no joy stick, as the technology  “…translates brain waves into digital information and beam it wirelessly to computers or other devices.” See http://johnstumor.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-07-13T07:00:00-05:00&max-results=7

Here a link to the nifty Wall Street Journal article by Jen Murphy http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304141204577510740730336270.html

And here’s a link to Neurotopia’s website: http://neurotopia.com/