A young woman from Quebec must begin the fight of her life, a few weeks before her 20th birthday, to face an inoperable brain tumor at the same time as her grandmother is carried away by the same disease, which could be partly hereditary.
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“When I learned that my daughter was going to be degraded in the same bed that my mother occupied a few days earlier at the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus, the sons touched each other. I couldn’t believe it was happening to us,” recounts Anne Harvey emotionally.
photo courtesy
Marianne Genois on the hospital bed occupied by her grandmother.
For several weeks, her 19-year-old daughter, Marianne Genois, had severe headaches that her relatives attributed to migraines. Moreover, in mid-July, the pain was so intense that she had to go to the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus to receive adequate treatment.
That’s when he was diagnosed with a diffuse midline glioma. This is advanced and inoperable brain cancer, partly because of where it is located.
Photo agency QMI, Pascal Huot
“The sky has fallen on our heads, like an accumulation of bad news. It’s one thing to bury your parents, more than it is another to bury your children, ”breathes the mother of the family.
A genetic prevalence?
photo courtesy
Louise Gaudreault celebrating her last birthday. She died a week after her granddaughter was diagnosed with a similar incurable cancer.
A few months earlier, Marianne Genois’ grandmother herself learned that she suffered from a similar brain tumor. Louise Gaudreault finally passed away on July 24, at the age of 72, joining just a week after the announcement of her granddaughter’s diagnosis.
“Yet he was given at least a year and a half with treatment. We like to think that she left earlier to take care of Marianne”, launches Mme Harvey, accompanied by the flowers that went to his mother’s funeral the day before.
Photo agency QMI, Pascal Huot
Doctors also believe that genetics may have some role to play in the prevalence of this disease in the family. One of their cousins also received a similar diagnosis recently.
Given the situation, Anne Harvey, who suffered from migraines after years, must receive within a few days the results of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to check if he has generated this “gene”.
Head full of projects
In the meantime, her daughter is undergoing numerous chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments which aim to slow down the expansion of the tumor, even if they will never cure the 19-year-old young woman.
Despite the situation, she refuses to feel sorry for herself and says she enjoys life, surrounded by the people she loves. His relatives also refused to know the prognosis established by the doctors.
Photo agency QMI, Pascal Huot
“I try to be the same Marianne as before, but I live from day to day. I have no choice, ”leaves the main interested party to understand.
A fashion lover, she would like to take advantage of her last moments to launch her own clothing company for exceptional people or to visit haute couture cities around the world.
Join the fundraising campaign go finance me spear for a family friend to fulfill his dreams. It will also relieve the financial stress of her mother, who had to close her daycare center to care for her and her own mother for a few months.
Diffuse midline glioma
- Also called infiltrating brainstem glioma
- Aggressive brain tumor originating in the brainstem
- There is no cure
- Radiotherapy and therapeutic treatment in a palliative perspective
- Median overall survival is 11 months
Source: Merck Manuals and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
