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SE MN | In April 2011, my dad was diagnosed with a Glioblastoma brain tumor. As some of you know, this is a very aggressive, nearly always lethal (aka the widow maker), form of brain cancer. At the time, no one in my family/extended family had heard of it. The doctor told us it was extremely rare, 1 in 200,000 people. They also told us that they did not know what caused them, but there was some very loose correlation to stress, exposure to herbicides, and previous head trauma. Dad was batting 100% so we all figured he was just unlucky. In the last 14 years, I can now name no less than a dozen people who have died from the same thing that grew up in this area. My mom's sister, who grew up less than two miles from were I live and Dad grew up, being one of them. We live in a somewhat sparsely populated area in southern MN and I do not know 200,000 people. It is my belief that there may be something environmental causing this as not everyone that I know was directly involved in agriculture.
My goal is to accumulate enough data to intrigue someone, some organization to pick this up as a research project. Since my Dad's passing, my Mom has been very active in our local Cancer Group. Every year they raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to donate to cancer research. Really quite impressive for a town of 2000 people. In her time serving on that group, my Mom has gained access to decision makers in several institutions that do cancer. I hoping to collect enough data to make a "heat map" of cases of this disease and then have her run that up the flag pole with the ultimate goal of getting some horsepower behind it. People that have had experience with these type of cancer know that it extremely devastating, not only to the individual but also the family. At this time there is no cure, no preventative measures, nothing. My Dad survived 31 months and he was an anomaly.
Here's my ask. I've included my email. If you know someone personally that has this type of cancer please send me an email with any pertinent information you wish to share. (i.e. name (Just to eliminate duplicates) ,where they grew up, age they were diagnosed, occupation, etc). I'll compile the data and post updates as the data set grows. Obviously keeping things anonymous.
Thank you so much in advance. With the broad/diverse reach of this platform hopefully a compelling case can be made.
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Glioblastoma Research
