Focusing On Patients

Beating a brain tumor
(continued)

"It feels really weird to have a seizure," added Franklyn. "It's like something on you is wiggling, but you're not wiggling it."

His mother rushed him to the local emergency room, where a CT scan revealed a mass surrounded by blood in Franklyn's left temporal lobe. Doctors put Franklyn on medications that kept the seizures at bay, and referred him to UC Davis Medical Center, where he was examined by Edie Zusman, co-director of the comprehensive epilepsy program and leader of the brain tumor program at UC Davis Medical Center.

Seizures are not always the result of a brain tumor, but they're the most common symptom in adults and the easiest to notice. Doctors suspected Franklyn's problem was a tumor or a vascular malformation, a tangled knot of blood vessels that can look like a tumor on imaging tests.

Franklyn underwent an MRI and a PET scan, a special test that measures the metabolic and chemical activity of tissue. Soon, his problem had a name: Oligo-astrocytoma, a hybrid of two types of malignancies.

Brain tumors are a rare and serious disease whose causes are largely unknown. An estimated 36,000 Americans will be diagnosed with primary brain tumors this year. Another 150,000 will develop brain tumors as the result of metastatic lung, colon, liver or breast cancer, according to the American Brain Tumor Association.