Victoria is quiet when you first meet her, she is a little shy and introverted; however she is very social and loves to talk and hang out once she knows the person and is comfortable. She has a wicked and dry sense of humor. She processes information very slowly so sometimes she takes a very long time to respond and people think she is ignoring them. She is just working through the information. She LOVES to dance, she is ballet dancer and just got on to pointe (Physical Therapy finally made that possible). She is 13, so what makes her laugh is no longer a fixed thing that I can quickly hit on, it seems to change daily. She also loves to sing. She has to work harder then most kids to do average but she does it with grace and most don’t realize it. She is sweet, kind, and funny. Looking at her you would have no idea of the challenges she (we) have faced in the last 6 years.
When she was 7, she was fading, complaining of headaches, not participating in activities because she was too tired or had a head ache. Then in late July 2012 she started throwing up every morning for weeks, but then would be okay by mid day. She was sort of “grey” looking and wilted. It happened slowly and over time, but it became very noticeable in August 2012. She was always tripping, falling, and running into things. She would walk like she was drunk. It took a while to see the issues as a whole because it was such a slow slide down. (her tumor was very slow growing) She was diagnosed in August of 2012 with Juvenile Pilocystic Astrosytoma.
She has had 3 brain surgeries, two to remove tumors and one to place a permanent internal medium flow shunt to relieve reoccurring hydrocephalus due to the multiple brain surgeries. She has had to have corrective eye surgery to fix what got damaged in the first brain surgery. She did a year of chemo from 2015-2016 to address a 3rd and 4th reoccurrence of tumors in areas that could not be surgically addressed (inside her cerebellum and on her brain stem). She is just now completing PT for some muscle under development and atrophy issues from hospital stays and the tumor damage to her Verminous and cerebellum. We are currently in a stable state right now with regard to her disease. However for 5 years every thing revolved around what was happening in her brain. This was very rough on our other child as he was 4 years old when she was first diagnosed (he’s now 9). It was incredibly stressful for everyone. We are normalizing now, now we can do more then survive the day/week/month, etc. It was a challenge for many years, and I spend the year plus she was in treatment not working.
Cancer has definitely shaped perspective and life differently then if we had not had this diagnosis. My youngest wanted to know for a long time when he got to have a brain tumor because all he saw was the inequity of the attention she got. As he got a little older he started to have nightmares of her dying. She was always a bit introverted but all of this caused her to with draw more into herself. She is doing better about coming out of her shell now, but she had to worry about dying and being able to do basic functions when she should have been doing life carefree. It has effected her abilities in school and exacerbated some existing struggles she had. This means I spend a lot more time dealing with school issues. It impaired my ability to work or do much of anything for 5+ years. We are normalizing now. It brought us closer together and showed us we could as a family do anything.
Hope session by Sherry Dornblasser Photography | Facebook | Instagram