My History

     I found out I had a brain tumor at the age of two.  It took m sight in my right eye.  After that I had brain surgery, radiation and a couple rounds of kemo therapy.  I had two central lines in my chest and a portacath that never heeled and popped out of my skin! That was fun.  They couldn't remove my brain tumor because of where it was but they were able to shink it.  After my third round of kemo, my brain tumor stopped growing.  We kept it monitored with an MRI every three months.
     While my brain tumor was dormant, we addressed another problem.  I was going into puberty too young.  It was because of my radiation, and kept under control with a lupron shot every month.  Not fun, but manageable.  This went on for a couple years.  Then the terrible happened, my brain tumor grew.
     I had to go through two more rounds of kemo, in which I managed to break my portacath and it traveled into my heart.  Into the ICU!  I had surgery to take out the portacath and another surgery to put in a new one.  The new portacath worked better.  I got my brain tumor under controll again.
     After finishing kemo they took me off the lupron and let me go into puberty.  The only problem was, it had spead up my groath plates!  I was going to be 4ft. 9in for the rest of my life.  So what do we do? I took a groath hormon shot to help me grow and a pill to slow my groath plates.  The doctors thought I wouldn't grow much, but I showed them!  I grew three inches and I am now 5ft. tall!
    I had fixedmost of my problems, but I had always had a weight problem and now my eye was bothering me.  The doctors told me to exercise, eat healthy, even to stop drinking so much mik!  What they didn't tell me is that I had hypothalamic obesity.  My mom ended up figuring it out, with all her research.   When she talked to the doctors they said that they knew I had hypothalamic obesity.  It made us very mad, but happy to know it wasn't my fault.  I started a kind of diet and exercised more, it kept my weight under control.
     The only thing left was my eye.  I would get a kind of headache behind my eye, it would come on suddently and leave slowly.  I would have to lay down and close my eye's.  On top of that my left eye wasn't tracking with my right eye.  I needed to meet with my eye doctor to see what was wrong, but he was very busy.  So we got an appointment with another doctor that turned out to be the exact right doctor for me.  She treatted cases like mine and was happy to meet with me and my mom.  She diagnosed, and proved her diagnoses on my eye.  She had inly seen it one other time, my eye was having small seizures and I took seizure medicine and it stopped.
   Now I'm a semi- regular teen.  I still have to do a lot to keep my weight under control.  I have stopped gaining weight but I really want to loose some of the weight.  Me and my family are always looking for solutions.  I take metformin and that looks to be helping.  I won't stop looking.

Kate & Madison

We are here and we want to fight hypothalamic obesity, for all of the cancer patients who are still fighting.  Madison and Kate are best friends.  Kate had a stroke when she was a baby, so she knows what it's like dealing with side affects.  She has helped her through so many things.  Madison has been fighting brain cancer since she was two, now her brain tumor is dormant but she is not healthy yet.  We want to find a cure to hypothalamic obesity for all who are still fighting after their cancer.