Jill Camirand's U-Turn

Navigating the terrain from seizures to surgery to survivorship.

       For Jill Camirand, 34, a massage therapist and brain cancer survivor, the T-shirt she donned during the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Austin this fall said it all: CANCER TREATMENT: THE ULTIMATE TRAINING PROGRAM.

       Camirand and her husband, Rob Lloyd, of Flagstaff, Ariz., churned 65 miles on Sunday, October 24, on a tandem, to remind themselves and supporters not only that Camirand was "back," but that the marathon she ran earlier in 2010—following two brain surgeries, radiation, and chemo—was no fluke. Mileage is now her medicine.

       But while Camirand soundly finished the Big Sur marathon in April in a tidy 4 hours, 50 minutes (quite possibly a record for brain cancer survivors who've endured multiple surgeries in the same year), her road to recovery and survivorship wasn't exactly silky smooth.

       Prior to her diagnosis she suffered unpredictable headaches, seizures, speech loss, and what she called light-headed "moments"—or spells of confusion that felt to her more like déjà vu than just-about-to-faint. As someone who follows an active, healthful lifestyle, she at first had no clue as to what was happening inside her head.

       "They weren't grand mal seizures; that's what everybody thinks when they hear 'seizure,'" Camirand explains. "They were much more subtle. I wasn't falling over or anything. I'd do a 17-mile race and then think I was alright." When you're 33 and tenacious, you tend not to think "brain tumor" straightaway.

       "She's a healthy, organic-eating…non-smoking hippie chick," says Lloyd, who has been a college and pro triathlete and swim coach, and who now works at W.L. Gore, developer of athletic wear fabrics. He couldn't pinpoint any initial trigger for her neurological spells either.

       A licensed massage therapist sensitive to subtle changes in the body, Camirand initially blamed stress, as did her doctors, clueless that the actual cause was a tumor the size of an avocado that had grown and attached to her brain on the side of her skull. She continued to practice, but noticed at times that she would lose focus or forget the names of certain muscles on which she was trying to apply manual pressure. Eventually she was diagnosed with oligoastrocytoma, at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., in July 2009.

       Pronounced AH-lih-go-AS-tro-sy-TOH-muh, oligoastrocytoma is a tumor that forms within the glial cells, which protect and support nerve cell functions in the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms of such tumors often are subtle, including a patient sensing unusual smells or tastes of unknown origin, or slight language or memory problems. Approximately 22,000 total cases of brain tumor or other spinal tumors of the nervous system are diagnosed each year in the U.S., the National Cancer Institute reports.

       Once Camirand's tumor was studied, pathologists and oncologists graded the tumor a Grade Two (out of four), considered serious but stoppable. But before it could be removed, Camirand suffered a dramatic side effect: The pressure from the tumor was squeezing brain mass inside her left temporal lobe and causing her to rapidly lose her vocabulary. The pressure knocked out certain memory function, as well as much of her ability to speak the way she had for most of her 34 years. Because of the tumor's position, Camirand says, her surgeon was concerned about disrupting abilities such as speech and memory when it came time to remove the first section of tumor. Later, Camirand needed to revisit third grade reading and vocabulary books to relearn how to speak and write as an adult. Scary, but necessary.

       "After I had the two brain surgeries," Camirand says, "I was in the hospital for a week, had chemo for seven months, and radiation. But I knew I was in good hands. There wasn't one thing I doubted." In fact, right from the start, Camirand made it clear she wanted her life back—and fast. "When I was sitting there with my head shaved and staples in my head, I said, 'I am going to Italy,'" she says.

       Lloyd took a slightly longer view as he set up a blog and detailed minor recovery "victories" along the way. These days he mixes wisdom and humor in his approach to helping Camirand reclaim her former "self." At first sight, describing her whirring, proton-accelerator radiation machine housed in the treatment room at Mayo Clinic, he commented: "It also makes a damn good Frappucino mocha latté."

       More recently Lloyd wrote, "Wednesday was Jilly's 34th birthday.… We really are thankful to be alive. Birthdays have now become more important, as you need to treasure every breath, thought, emotion, sunrise, snowfall, friend, family, and day."

       Mayo Clinic neuro-oncologist Alyx Porter, M.D., who has treated Camirand and provides her survivorship care, says, "She has a passion for life and a great sense of humor. She was accepting of the diagnosis and willing to be aggressive to fight it head on. She's…an inspiration."

       Together, Camirand and Lloyd also are not shy about postingthe gritty details of the case (visit jillcamirand.blogspot. com/ "Jill's Recovery".) Earlier this year, when they received good medical news and decided to post actual images of Camirand's brain MRI on the blog, it marked perhaps the final chapter in recovery from the tumor surgery and treatment. "You can see the 'void' where the tumor was," they eagerly shared, "which is now filled with cerebral fluid and is perfectly normal."

Article first published Fall 2010 in LIVESTRONG Magazine