Because
Often there is too much wrong in the world, sometimes there needs to be a little right.In the silence of the early summer night of June 2003, the seizure struck without warning, a violent precursor to the coming months for Newton resident, Corey Harder.
“It was a Friday night,” Corey said. “In the middle of the night, my wife Ronda woke up because I was making noises, making a mess, sloshing about in the bed.”
Ronda called 911 immediately and the EMS people arrived to give Corey medication. Harder remembers the medication woke him up within seconds.
“It felt like an elephant sat on my chest,” he said. “My head went back and I was out again. It was so painful.”
Corey, motorcycle designer, regained consciousness in the hospital. While he was unconscious, the staff of the hospital had administered tests, including an MRI, to determine the cause of the seizure. By morning, he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
The beginning of the fight
Harder’s doctor, Tim Wiens, told him that he needed to be put on an anti-seizure medication, and that he needed to get in touch with a specialist. Once home, he set up the appointment with a neurosurgeon, Dr. Earl Mills.
“Brain surgeons are brain surgeons for a reason,” Corey said. “They’re excellent surgeons, but they’re horrible with social skills. They can’t carry a conversation.
“It’s like if you took your family heirloom car to a mechanic because it didn’t work. He would say ‘Oh, here’s the problem, we can fix that, this might wear out after a while’, but he makes you feel good. You think a brain surgeon would do the same? No.”
Dr. Mills told Corey he had a stage 3 oligodendroglima. This is a type of cancerous tumor that affects the glial cells in the brain. The glial cells provide and support nutrition along with promoting signal transmission in the nervous system. These cells are the “glue” of the central nervous system.
Mills told Corey this growth was bad and chances for recovery were slim. Mills then ran his own MRI, which confirmed his original diagnosis.
“I said ‘Thank you, OK, I’ll probably get a second opinion,’” Corey said. “Mills said, ‘Fine, go get a second opinion, have him operate on you, I don’t care.’”
During this time, Corey’s mother from Mountain Lake, Minn., had moved to Kansas so she could lend her support to her son. Meanwhile, Corey was also struggling with his seizure medication because he was allergic to the first two types of pills his physicians tried.
The doctors told him that if the third type of medication didn’t work, he would have to go to another specialist to have medication custom made for him. By now, Corey was tired of the word “specialist.”
“You get a good, up-close look at the medical profession,” he said. “Doctors and nurses come and go and some care, others are just putting in the time. It’s frustrating beyond belief.”
Corey found his second brain specialist. After viewing his MRI, the doctor starting talking about “quality of life.” Corey was told the tumor was inoperable and his body’s systems would slowly shut down.
“That was a tough car ride home after that visit,” Corey said. “I went back to Dr. Mills and said ‘You’re the man. Cut me open.’”
Surgery and recovery
Corey played the waiting game as the doctor tried to coordinate the schedule for the surgery.
“While you sit around and wait, your priorities change,” he said. “Things you have interest in, you could care less about. You start thinking about your kid, your wife, family what it will be like if you’re not around. Things that interested me didn’t. I had a newborn kid.
“Priorities go down to your core,” he said. “It’s the people you love, and you want to protect. Material things go right out the window.”
Corey recalled it was about three weeks after the first seizure happened when his whole family came down from Minnesota. They were helping clean up the yard, trying to preoccupy the family with mundane tasks, when the phone rang.
“I finally got the phone call from the doctor’s office and they said there was a date set,” Corey said. “I went out and just broke down and started crying.”
They arrived early in the morning for the procedure. The doctors told Corey that he was just going to relax a little, and then they would get started on removing the lemon-sized lump. As Corey began to wake up after surgery, the doctors tested him.
“Can you remember who you are?” someone in the room asked.
“I’m Batman,” Corey said in reference to a popular Snickers commercial.
Within four days of his surgery, Corey walked out of the hospital. The week after his surgery, Corey was back in his yard, shoveling rock and moving stone.
Shortly after, Corey was given a PET scan, which is a scan to see if there is any cancerous material. They injected Corey with radiation laced with sugar because cancer processes sugar 1,000 times faster than anything else in the body. The process will make a flash on the X-ray. Corey had no flashes.
The miracle worker
After 6 months of treatment, and yet another MRI, the doctors said something was growing again.
“I went on the computer and looked up the survival rate of recurrence,” Corey said. “It was way low.”
Another specialist told Corey that the mass could be a re-growth of the tumor or it could be scar tissue, but there was no way of knowing. After another month, the specialist said the mass was still growing and it was becoming serious. Corey had arranged for another surgery and the date was set.
“I had a missionary friend from Minnesota, Elizabeth,” Corey said. “She told me I could not go to surgery without her coming down and seeing me. She has an incredible ability to know people. She’s a missionary and she does God’s work. She works on miracles.”
Elizabeth journeyed down to Corey’s Newton home. The two of them began to discuss exactly who Corey was, and Elizabeth told Corey that the illness was defining him.
“I had to do some hard thinking of what was I was dealing with,” Corey said. “She said that if you believe in God, sometimes you have to take a step of faith and challenge God.”
Corey and Elizabeth prayed together quite a bit, she laid her hands on him and anointed him with oil. They prayed again.
“She got done and I was tired,” Corey said. “I went and took a nap and slept for an hour-and-a-half. When I woke up I was a completely different person. I was seeing everything different.”
Corey called his doctor’s office and cancelled the operation. Five minutes later, the doctor’s office called back asking him if he was sure he really wanted to cancel.
“I thought to myself, ‘if God wants to take me, He will either kill me with a brain tumor, or I’ll get hit by a car or I’ll have a heart attack or something,’” Corey said. “He’ll take me when He wants to take me. I’m not going to let Him take me on the surgery table. I put it in His hands and left it there. Every MRI after that showed a shrinkage of the mass.”
The support network
Corey has been cancer free since that fateful June. He runs into people that he hasn’t seen for a while and the first questions out of their mouths are about him, his head and even his brain.
“It funny, because I went through it and I was done,” he said. “It didn’t define me, it’s not who I am. But that’s all they can remember, so you answer politely.”
Corey was fortunate with his support network of friends and family.
“It’s unbelievable the friends you have, that you know nothing about,” he said. “My mom writes for my hometown newspaper, and while she was down, she was sending articles back and people were emailing her, asking how I was doing.
“Ronda was very supportive. She was always optimistic. You concentrate a lot on your feelings for each other going through something like that. But you learn to say everything you want to say to someone while they’re in front of you, while you still have the chance. ”
Mountain Lake’s own Lions’ club had a pancake fundraiser for the Harders where they raised $10,000. Their church in Newton set up a bank account for donations to help alleviate the medical costs. The local car club had a surprise cookout where they gave Corey the big bucket of donations. Even Corey’s close friends shaved their heads as a symbol of support.
“We ran a thank you in our hometown newspaper in Minnesota,” he said. “We stood up in church and we thanked everyone as we were crying.”
Even talking about the outpouring of support, words catch in his throat.
“I feel for people when I know they’re hurt if it’s a brain tumor or something like that” he said. “I want to find out who they are and how I can help. It’s the thing I went through in my life, that God wants me to use, to explain to others His effect on life. I never feel like I do it enough, or that I’ve done it enough. Life is precious."
posted by Rusty @ 9:52 AM
Comments: 1
