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Darren's Story

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Andrew Schorr:

If you or a loved one is diagnosed with a brain tumor seeking specialized care at an academic Medical Center isn't just preferred. It's really critical. You'll hear why from an expert from Northwestern's brain tumor institute and his inspiring patient coming up next on Patient Power sponsored by Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Hello once again. Thank you for joining us. I'm Andrew Schorr. This is Patient Power sponsored by Northwestern Memorial Hospital. We do this every two weeks, and we have a vast library of past programs to connect you with leading experts from Northwestern and inspiring patients. I'm joining you from Seattle where it's sunny today. It was raining this morning. Hopefully it's nice where you are.

We're going to have a leading expert from Northwestern when it comes to brain cancer and brain tumors in just a minute, but first we're going to go to Los Angeles, and I want to tell you the story of our first guest, and that is Darren Latimer. Now, Darren is normally from Chicago. He is in the investment banking business. He works for one of the big banks. He's going to join us from taking a break before he flies home from Los Angeles International Airport, LAX. So he's 34 now. He's married. He has three little girls. When he had just one girl and he was 30 he was jogging on the boardwalk in Long Island near his in laws just Christmas Eve day, and he got the worst headache of his life. Darren, did I describe it right? You had to sit down it was so bad.

Darren:

It was the most debilitating thing I'd ever felt. Clearly I'd never had an issue like this so I sat down, I think I even laid down, and finished my run, and that was it for me. So you've got it right on.

Andrew Schorr:

Now, in someone that age you say, okay, you have a really bad headache. Could be a migraine or some other kind of thing like that. And so you're a busy guy, you're flying around the country, it happened again on some flights, right?

Darren:

It happened again on a couple flights in February and March and even in April, and frankly I really didn't say anything to anybody because it was just a headache, I was working real hard, and I tried to ignore it for as long as I could.

Andrew Schorr:

Right. And I know the official world is stressful now, but it's always been stressful, and so eventually though you put it off. You were having some eye problems too. You go to the eye doctor because you had had Lasik surgery a couple, two, three years earlier, see your eye doctor. Was he concerned?

Darren:

I saw my eye doctor, in fact I put the appointment off and then I saw my eye doctor, I had an appointment and I had a golf round, and I missed another eye doctor appointment. Finally I went on May 9th in 2005, and the minute he looked in my eye he saw a tremendous amount of stress in my retina, and he was very concerned. Made me very nervous. He was really alarmed. He was hoping it was an infection in my eye, he told me that, but that was not what he was really thinking.

Andrew Schorr:

He says, you got to go to the emergency room?

Darren:

Right away. In fact I remember him saying my son or my brother or somebody is leaving the office right now, will drive you. And I said don't worry about it. It's no problem. I've got to go back to the office, which I did. And then I went over to the ER, and my wife met me with my 15 month old in the ER, and she was real nervous also.

Andrew Schorr:

No kidding. So you have an MRI. You have a CAT scan, and they tell you what?

Darren:

About eleven o'clock at night on May 9th, I think it was a Monday night, they show me the pictures, and I was shocked. I had never heard of this. I had never thought about something like this. If you were walking down the street and someone says to you, boy, what's the worst thing that can happen to you, you'd say, well, you can get a brain tumor. And then I started to think about the old movie Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger, which a lot of people probably have seen, and made some jokes about it because it was such a random event, and it was so shocking. They showed me the pictures. They told me what this was or what they thought it was, and they can only tell you so much on your initial pictures. And they admitted me at night.

Andrew Schorr:

And you're admitted, and there's your wife and your kid, and this is just devastating for all of you.

Darren:

Devastating, and by that time at midnight, believe it or not, I think I had my brother there and a friend of mine there and my wife was there and my dad was there, and it was devastating because I felt fine. I could have jogged home from the hospital. I was fine. But they told me I had to go in and it had to be immediate, and frankly, I'll tell you something. With somebody with pretty severe claustrophobia an MRI is the last place you want to go. Certainly an MRI that's going to show some really bad stuff, it's the last place you want to be.

Andrew Schorr:

No kidding, Darren. So you're introduced to Dr. Levy, one of the neurosurgeons from Northwestern, and you had surgery three days later.

Darren:

On Thursday, May 12th. I remember all the dates when this first happened. I had surgery. I remember lying on the table and going under, and they tell me nine hours later I woke up. And it was one of the worst feelings I could have ever felt, waking up from the surgery with all things tied to you, all parts of your body, and your throat and your head is pounding, and you weren't sure where you were, but I had an inkling.

Andrew Schorr:

And you're 30 years old, and you're a dad, and you have a career ahead of you. And what this turned out to be I understand was a lemon sized tumor behind your right ear.

Darren:

That's right. It was a lemon sized tumor, and frankly on May 9th, or May 10th, my initial discussion with Dr. Levy, he wasn't quite sure what it was. He was hoping it was going to be a lower level tumor, but he could only do so much and he couldn't promise me anything. And after surgery I think on Friday when I was able to listen and sit up he told me what he thought it was. He said then there had to be more tests and more pathology, and these are all new words for me at the time. I didn't know what pathology meant or neuro oncology at that time. So add the immense amount of drugs that I was already on from the surgery it was pretty trying and confusing and people coming in and students checking you out, and it's a lot going on at one time. But it's all for the right reasons and it's all the right process. That's just how it has to go down.

Andrew Schorr:

Let's explain something to our listeners. Now, there are brain tumors that develop of cancer that started somewhere else, and that can happen in advanced breast cancer. It can happen very often, unfortunately too often, in lung cancer, for example. But what we're talking about with Darren is a cancer that is primary and starts right there in the brain and then as it gets bigger and bigger starts affecting function, so he had the headache. Did you have any other symptoms at all when you think back? Did it affect your speech or your thinking?

Darren:

You know what, it never affected my speech. What it affected besides the random headaches caused by severe pressure which was really in the airplane or the eye spasms, I think my eye doctor called it, years later I did think about noticing certain voices that I heard, whomever they could be, work colleagues, friends, whomever, made me kind of zone out. This was pre-tumor. And those voices even when I hear them today I still think about it. Now, I don't zone out as much or at all, but I was zoning out, and I think a neurologist at Northwestern that Dr. Raizer introduced me to had really labeled those as mini seizures. So I think for probably the six months prior to May I was having a lot of these mini seizures caused by these random voices I would hear occasionally. And that's the extent of it, but it didn't bother me then.

Andrew Schorr:

Now, if somebody is listening astutely and we said this gentleman, busy, investment banker running around the country, what has he done for years, and he had a tumor on the right side behind his right ear. Are you right-handed, Darren?

Darren:

I'm right-handed, and I use my right ear. In fact right now I'm using my left ear on the land line because I don't use cell phones anymore.

Andrew Schorr:

Right. But do we know whether cell phones lead to brain cancer? No, we don't. Darren, in your case you wonder about it, right?

Darren:

In my case I wonder a lot about it. I was using a cell phone for my primary phone for a long time before most people had cell phones, and I was using the big, clunky ones. And I always remember, I always remember my ear being very hot after being done. In fact I have one specific memory which is walking down Third Avenue in New York City on 9/11 about three o'clock in the afternoon trying to get ahold of everybody I could to tell them I was okay. And I remembering being on that cell phone all day, and I remember sitting down at night remembering how hot my ear was and how hot the whole side of my head was. And I never thought two and two was going to be a brain tumor, but I knew it just didn't feel right.