May 10 - Ependymoma Awareness Day
I’ve had a wave of emotions these past few weeks. Penn undergoing her second round of chemotherapy. April 30 being a year since we found out about Penn’s tumour. May 3 when she had her first craniotomy a year ago. And celebrating Mother’s Day this past weekend. I’m not going to lie. Things have been hard. Extremely hard. I don’t even know what to say when people ask how are you doing? What can I do for you? I want to answer, my old life back. A world with no cancer. A cure for Penn.
However, I have to remember why I started this blog. It was to remain positive, and count our wins rather than our losses. And with May being Brain Tumour Awareness month, I knew this was an opportunity to shed some light and education on brain cancer. Brain cancer survivorship has barely changed in the past 30 years, compared to other forms of cancer.
Here are a few facts provided by the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada:
55,000 Canadians are living with a brain tumour.
There are over 120 different types of brain cancer which makes effective treatment very complicated.
More children die each year from brain tumours than any other childhood cancer.
Penn has been diagnosed with anaplastic ependymoma. This means, that her cancer is a high grade tumour that multiplies rapidly in her brain and spine. May 10 has been chosen as Ependymoma Awareness Day due to the 10 different molecular groups of ependymoma. In the science world, ependymoma is a heterogenous disease (multiple diseases within a disease). This makes treatment extremely complex.
Penn’s willingness to fight and be brave throughout all of her treatments has left me wanting to fight too. No family should be going through this. No family or child should have to battle cancer. Although it’s been hard on our family, we know there are other families that don’t have the support of family and friends like we do.
Hopefully by now, you’re asking yourself, what can you do. Here is how you can help:
Continue to learn more about brain cancer throughout the month of May. Please visit Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada and CERN Foundation for more information.
#TurnMayGray - Wear your favourite gray shirts, pants, hats, nail polish, and update your social media accounts with a grayscale profile picture… Try to post grayscale images only this month!
Get creative with the CERN Butterfly Colouring Page and share on your social media accounts.
Share information on ependymoma with another person who has never heard of it!
Follow @PennTheBraveYYC on Instagram. We are excited to share some news in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
