12/18/2023 0 Comments Gordon downie cancerMacAllister had returned to work a month after, but “25 months later, in April, it came back.” Almost a week after the second surgery, the cancer showed signs it was growing back. “Though we knew the seriousness of the situation, you always have a bit of denial,” says Johanna, 40. After the first one, doctors told the couple the tumour could come back within 18 to 24 months. MacAllister was diagnosed in March 2014, when he was 44, after he began to have trouble speaking. They caught Downie’s eye as he moved slowly across the stage at the end of the show, peering at what felt like every face in the room. It was becoming harder to speak and he could no longer walk, so Johanna called the ticket vendor and it gave the family seats that would accommodate a wheelchair. MacAllister’s condition had worsened since the family bought the tickets in May. Weeks before, the family had been to the Hip’s tour stop in London. MacAllister says he was “blown away” when he found out that Downie has the same cancer he has. The flip side is there’s so much I wanted to do.”īut he says he takes a little more time now to greet the cashier at the grocery store, to help people, to stop when he’s tired. “I had this feeling that if I died tomorrow, I’m not scared. Once he’d recovered from the news of his diagnosis, he had a moment of clarity. He meets with other glioblastoma patients once a month and is writing a book about his experience. “I want to help others,” Butterfield says. But he questions it and even took it up with a rabbi once, who suggested it’s for a reason. After three years, he went back to work at the B.C. He ran a marathon in Iceland and participated in an unsuccessful clinical trial. He met someone with whom he got married and had a daughter, Hana, who is now 8. His cancer was too deep for surgery, but chemo and radiation kept it at bay and he took the following year to do “all sorts of crazy things.” At the age of 29, at what felt like the height of his career in genome research, he had an unexplainable headache when he had the seizure nearly 13 years ago.īutterfield, who happens to be a cancer researcher, is a rare long-term survivor of glioblastoma multiforme. The last thing Yaron Butterfield remembers of the moment that changed his life is not being able to speak.
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