In my university years in the 1990s studying Biochemistry and later post-graduate education in Pharmaceutical R&D, I learned about proteins and enzymes, and possible approaches to discover and develop medicines that target the specific proteins and enzymes linked to diseases or metabolic dysfunction as a means of therapy and perhaps cure.  I learned how it was possible to screen thousands of possible chemical structures to find something that might block an enzyme by binding to it or interfering with it, and that over the course of decades an initial protein or enzyme of interest could start us down a path to identify a useful molecule and then develop it into a medicine that could be tested for safety and efficacy and later used to treat individuals and provide hope for a better quality of life. I have reviewed my textbooks and find extraordinarily little in the way of functional or causal understanding of brain cancers.   It took until 2010 and later before researchers...

My surgery took place on Tuesday November 1 st , 2022, at St. Michael's hospital in Toronto.   The roughly 12-hour procedure went smoothly and still feels pretty incredible given the timeline from a January discussion with my doctor about what I thought were panic attacks, to an October 13 th MRI with radiology report on October 19 th , consultation with one of Canada's leading Neurosurgeons on October 27 th , then wheeling into an Operating Room just days later, with a team of six exceptional doctors whose names I know and some others who made it the success it was. Image 2:  Before and after surgery The MRI images before and after the surgery show a near complete resection.   For those unfamiliar with viewing images like these, they’re reversed left-to-right in the same way that in a photograph of two people, the person on the left side of the photo is standing on the right side of the person next to them, from their perspective.   The pathology report documents f...

 In 2020, the whole world adjusted to respond to the newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 virus we would soon know as COVID-19, for the disease it causes.  I began working remotely in March 2020 and by around July I started noticing short moments where I felt ‘disjointed’ but couldn’t quite explain.  I started tracking these sensations by noting when they occurred, the intensity on a scale of 1 to 10, and with a short note about what I was doing at the time and what the sensation felt like.  They were rare at first, but by November 2020 I experienced them at least weekly.  I tracked with more focus and initially felt they lined up well with symptoms of panic attack that many were talking about as we adjusted to the ‘new normal’ in a COVID world.  I focused more on meditation and breathing techniques, adding mindfulness practices and body scans to my days. By around October or November 2021, what I was now calling “events” were happening several times every day, someti...

Introduction  In sharing my story, I hope to reveal some details and insight that might help other patients and those close to them talk openly about a range of experiences, to make related topics more accessible by matching technical terms with more common language, and to offer hope about the current advances in research.   I’ll do this by sharing a little about my background leading up to early symptoms resulting in my diagnosis of (currently) incurable Grade II Oligodendroglioma, and why my undergraduate degree and work history leave me excited about new hope for others who experience Low Grade Glioma.   I’ll include references to journal articles and information sources as I go, which you’ll see as superscript bracketed numbers (e.g. (1) , (2) , (3) , etc.) …   If you want to connect more, look for me on Twitter / X ( @StupertInTO ), Facebook, or through existing contact information you might have for me – I’m happy to share more and to dive deeper into any topi...

In January, 2024, I shared "My Story" as a ten page .pdf (7.5 pages of 'story' with 1.5 pages of cited references) as a way of covering questions many close to me had already asked, and more that some might have found it difficult or awkward to ask.   I shared the .pdf on Facebook, Twitter, and over email and similar, and started engaging more with the broader Brain Tumour community. While reading others' experiences in shared groups and on published blogs, I realized that a blog format will be a better way of capturing my evolving story.  In February, 2024, this led me to adding a Blogger blog, here at https://oligostu.blogspot.com/, and I've begun by splitting that January .pdf into a few posts to get started.  I've back-dated this and the first few posts to line up with when I began sharing my story, and will see soon how frequently I share updates, as the story develops. My initial shared .pdf is now captured in my first four blog posts: My Story - Int...