Brenda was the love of my life. She was beautiful, brilliant, joyous, gifted, loving, and loved. We met when she was 21 and I was 23 in Florence, Italy, where we lived for a decade before moving to San Diego.
In September of 2020, she started having some short-term memory loss and tingling in her right hand, and in October, she was diagnosed with an inoperable Glioblastoma with a mass exceeding 40mm that spanned her entire brain.
A biopsy was performed to verify the diagnosis and she started medications (Dexa, Keppra, Norco), which were followed by radiation and chemo until we stopped after 7 sessions because she could no longer handle it; her brilliant mind was not the same after.
They gave us 3 months and she passed on July 2, 2021. She was stoic and strong and endured this trial with grace and dignity.
I sent her medical records to research in hope that it may help someone else.
I miss her more than words can express and more than I could’ve imagined.
In December 2019, Daddy was having symptoms of a stroke. He said it felt like the computer in his head had malfunctioned. His General Practitioner did not want to do an MRI, because it wouldn’t show much at his age and he’d had mini-strokes before. I insisted on that MRI, and the results showed a mass on the left occipital lobe. Daddy was then scheduled for a biopsy a few weeks later, due to the December holiday.
