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Keeping the Faith

Ken Bean

Ken

Bean

Submitted by:
Theresa Bean

For several yrs Ken had what we thought was a pinched nerve in his neck that lead to tingling in his finger/thumb. He received chiropractic treatments regularly which helped initially. One evening in October 2014 while out running, he began to notice he was having some tingling in the side of his face that was in a localized area & over time began to spread to his neck. At first the tingling was sporadic maybe twice every few mths then became more frequent & coming on a daily basis multiple times. He was having over 100 of these spells daily. So we went to his DR who ordered a CT scan followed by an MRI after seeing what was suspicious of a tumor. My worst fear was confirmed. So I began trying to find a neurologist, after three days without any luck (no one could see him until Feb 2015 ), we were able to get in with oncologist Dr. Cavalere at the James. He also had Ken see Dr. Elders. As it turns out these tingling spells he was having was simple partial seizures. Our goal was to get him seizure free for a biopsy and surgery to remove the tumor. He was put on 3 different seizure meds which made him drowsy and very difficult to work. It was Jan 2015 when he was seizure free and able to finally have the surgery. Dr. Elders told us the surgery would take approximately 5-6 hrs but if he had a seizure during that time it would end the procedure. So when I got paged that Dr. Elders wanted to meet with me after a little over 4 hrs I was scared. I thought Ken had a seizure or he just wasn’t able to remove the tumor (could effect speech, motor functions). However the outcome was much better he was able to remove most of the tumor (glioma grade 2) and we would follow up with chemo to get the remainder. Once he was cleared to resume normal activities Ken returned to running. He uses running for a purpose to help support & fundraise for others with brain tumors/cancer. To date Ken has been tumor/cancer free for 4.5 yrs & runs more marathons after surgery than before.