A road to hope

And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.

... some day I hope you get the chance

To live like you were dying.

~ Lyrics from Tim McGraw song

The tumor in Gwen Street’s head had been growing for 20 years. But it’s only been a year since it was discovered. Her story is astonishing.

And the insight she offers to others about the emotional needs of a person who gets that diagnosis is significant, because her journey is unique.

“I found out what it feels like to believe you’re going to die — and then to find out you have a future,” she told The Journal.

Although meningioma cells had been filling the nooks and crannies of her face and skull for years, Street had no symptoms, not a clue. Unsuspecting, the 51-year-old wife, mother and grandmother went about her life, working 12-hour shifts as a water and waste treatment operator at the paper mill.

It was a trip to the eye doctor that unfolded an ordeal which has changed Street’s life dimensionally, and, she says, taught her how to live.

“In nine days I went from needing new glasses to needing brain surgery,” she said.

After breaking her occupational safety glasses and needing a routine eye exam, Street went to see optometrist Jim Saurdiff at Exact Eye Clinic in the Falls. The timing of that visit was profound.

Saurdiff detected pressure on Street’s optic nerve. And although she didn’t know it, Street had lost the central vision in her left eye. Because the brain reads images from both eyes, her right eye compensated for the deficiency.

Saurdiff immediately scheduled an MRI for the presumed cancer, and referred Street to a Duluth ophthalmologist.

On the phone two days later, she received the most unfathomable news of her life. The Duluth doctor explained that she would need surgery, but it wouldn’t be done in Duluth. It would happen in Rochester.

The images of Street’s head had shown an invasive tumor which filled her left sinus cavity, eye socket, top of her nose and frontal skull. The abnormal tissue had compacted Street’s brain “into a ball and pushed it upwards into the back” of her head, she said, still incredulous. It was also growing into her olfactory senses although she hadn’t noticed that she was slowly losing her ability to smell and taste.

Street and her husband Daryl went numb. “This just wasn’t believable,” she said.

Removal would require one of the best neurosurgeons in the country — she was sent to Dr. Michael Link at the Mayo Clinic.

Eight Mayo doctors actually scrutinized Street’s MRI before issuing a June 30th message: “Come now.”

Street called her family and e-mailed friends, asking for their prayers. “It’s (cancer) such an awful word,” Street said. “I literally was planning my funeral.” And feeling helpless was a feeling she had always shunned.

“I am the wife, the mother, the grandmother. I found myself in a role that I was not accustomed to. I’m the one who does the worrying. ... You don’t want your family to be afraid for you.”

One of the most painful moments came when her granddaughter asked her, “Grandma, are you gonna die?” Street said she buckled when she couldn’t answer “No.”

She offers her own truths about what cancer victims need emotionally. A gregarious and articulate person, Street makes known her personal thoughts and feelings about living in a body which has betrayed itself. And she says how others react can make the difference between torture and respite, between distress and solace.

She believes that those who’ve been told they have a devastating illness are overwhelmed by the loss of control in their lives. They crave normalcy. And they’re lonely — struggling to protect the feelings of loved ones while they’re falling apart themselves — an added pressure when harsher realities are circling.

But this is a woman who has emerged victorious with a spirit that inspires.

Mayo doctors were 99 percent sure that Street suffered neuroblastoma, a cancer which starts in the sinus cavity and pervades the tissues of the skull.

“The front of the brain is where function is,” Street said. “So every doctor put me through these rituals. They couldn’t understand how I could function. I told them ‘I work 12-hour shifts!’ They were dumbfounded. They were astounded.”

She had already been scheduled for brain surgery and chemotherapy. In unspeakable fear, Street underwent a biopsy on July 2 in Rochester. Before the couple got results, son Rylan back at their Littlefork home received a strange phone message from the Mayo Clinic.

He called his mother: “Mom, the surgery and the chemo’s been canceled. Everything’s changed.”

The couple felt a twist of emotion. “Well, it’s either too-far gone or they’re going to tell me it’s benign,” Street said to her husband. But internally, she believed it was bad news: “All I could think was ‘How could eight doctors be wrong?’ It had filled half my face. I had a head full of it.”

So Street was stunned when the radiologist congratulated her. “Your tumor is benign,” he said. “My head went right down in my hands,” she said.

Doctors were also shocked. The tumor had utterly mimicked neuroblastoma. Still, they credited Saurdiff’s detection — “He saved your life,” said Link. Street’s skull was so invaded with the tumor that estimates projected she was within months of having a major cerebral assault.

Still aggressive, the growth in Street’s head was a meningioma tumor — type 2 noncancerous. “They (doctors) said these tumors are never diagnosed,” Street said, explaining that more often they are detected when some other incident such as a car accident has revealed its growth.

Her surgery rescheduled to July 25, Street now found herself light as a feather, refusing to believe that anything could go wrong — and so grateful not to have cancer.

But Link advised her of the seriousness of the large tenacious tumor, warning that she could still have a stroke or wake up from surgery with lost abilities.

In the operating room for 13 hours at Mayo Hospital, surgeons peeled forward Street’s scalp and removed the bone of her entire forehead. They additionally went into her sinus cavity to begin removing the tumor.

Fat and tissue were incised from her thigh to pack in the skull cavity which would remain after the tumor was removed. “They didn’t know what my brain would do,” Street said. “But it has filled in and fluffed out nicely.”

She awoke with a metal-plated forehead and more than a dozen screws in her head. It was impossible to get every cell of the meningioma which had also attached to her optic nerve, an area where scraping is too dangerous. Her olfactory senses greatly damaged by the tumor, Street completely lost her sense of smell.

Still, she was exuberant.

Link said that people who go into brain surgery with positive energy improve 50-percent better than others. “And how you recover is up to you,” he told her.

This gave Street a coping strategy. She told herself, “One thing I have control over is how I’m going to react to this. OK, I’m in control again. I’ll be fine. I’m the boss here.”

“Pin-point” radiation still awaited Street. But four days after surgery with her nose packed and breathing through her mouth, she went home without ever having a headache.

The facility where she stayed while undergoing six weeks of radiation in Rochester figured prominent in Street’s experience. The place is Hope Lodge, made available by the American Cancer Society.

She had known for three months that she would check into Hope Lodge. But Street found herself in touch with pent-up emotions as she watched her family leave on Nov. 9. In their absence, she completely broke down.

“I had not really allowed myself to cry,” she said. “I felt I had to be strong.”

She felt a stranger’s arm come around her and the relief of just being. No explaining was necessary and “you’re not out of place,” she said. Although somewhat bald and looking fire-singed, Street said she felt normal there.

“Would you like me to help you put your stuff away?” the woman asked her. “I just sobbed,” she said. She sat with the woman’s family and soon the new friends went everywhere. They shopped together, ate together, and were — alive.

“Cancer patients feel separated from the normal world,” Street said. But in this place without pity, patients were needed by each other and got a chance to be the nurturers.

Experiencing this emotional acceptance made it hard for Street to leave Hope Lodge. Her group of friends still calls and e-mails each other and are planning a reunion.

But she said it never entered her head that not all of them were going to walk out. “We lost three of them within six weeks after I went home,” she said.

Street’s doctors consider her an amazing patient. “You are a walking miracle,” Link told her.

However, with a tumor that “filled in like foam,” an April checkup found traces of meningioma cells. “Residual cells will grow ... but I should never need surgery again,” Street said. “No big rush.” She will undergo another MRI in October.

Street said she and her family have been given new tools for enjoying life. In addition to son Rylan, Daryl and Gwen have a daughter, Melanie Walls, and son-in-law, Bob Walls.

Once depressed about hitting the age of 50, Street said her eyes have been opened. And the memories from her darkest days won’t let her respond to the world in old ways. She and Daryl have discussed how people who don’t have cancer tend to put it out of their minds.

“This has made me really, really understand that those who have cancer can’t put it away. If someone out there is afraid to pick up the phone — do it. It’s the nicest thing a person can do. Because it creates hope.” Her message to those who suffer: If you want to talk — talk. If you want to cry — cry.

“As much as people surround you, you’re alone,” she conveyed about patients. “That person goes home and life goes on,” she said. “If you elicit sympathy, people will give it to you, but then they will avoid you. People will even cross the street because they don’t know how to handle it.”

Street said that what she wanted from others was acknowledgement, but to be treated like herself — and to feel that hope and the love of life — are alive. Cancer patients ache to be treated as they were before the diagnosis.

A critically important part of normalcy is humor, Street said, adding that she was indebted to a friend and coworker who saw past the seriousness and offered his usual, sometimes irreverent, jokes.

Street, who now quips that she “must have a screw loose,” says humor is healing. “You don’t want people falling all over themselves, weeping over you, because it drags you down. People who joke — it’s a way of saying that things are going to be all right.”

Street recently discussed with a friend who is learning to adjust to a heart medication, that many people waste precious time feeling angry. Street increasingly surrounds herself with positive people, no longer using time to think negative, she said.

What Street said she learned at Hope Lodge is that even in the darkest hour, there must be hope. “You never, ever just give up and die.”

Although she intends to enjoy some camping adventures in the future, Street now lives in the moment. “I’m not planning next year, I’m not planning next month. I’m planning today. You don’t know if you have tomorrow.

“And you realize that things you used to be thankful for are now trivial. It’s amazing what becomes important.”

About Hope Lodge:

The American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge is a large facility located one block from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (also located in Minneapolis) and is free of charge regardless of income.

Its 63 rooms are usually full, but anyone stands a good chance of using it. Almost everything, except food, is provided. Nearly all of the people who volunteer at Hope Lodge have fought cancer themselves.

FOR MORE ON THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY, SEE STORY IN WEDNESDAY’S EDITION OF THE JOURNAL.