So, I accidentally attended a national meeting 14 days post brain surgery

It was nobody’s fault. If anything, it was a perfect storm.

I was excited to listen to the patient perspectives on research section of today’s meeting, convened by the NCI Patient Engagement in Cancer Genome Sequencing Network. I was supposed to be in “listen only” mode, and no one was expecting me to comment since I just had brain surgery 14 days ago.

But the moderator asked me for my thoughts on a topic; I paused and didn’t know what to do. No one said anything, then the moderator again asked what I thought. Well, ugh, I thought, so I unmuted and turned my camera on to attempt to answer the question.

I have no idea if anything I said made sense, but also I don’t think anyone cared that I was less than brilliant.

I spoke for maybe 2 minutes, and then Bethany Kwan and Charlie Blotner swooped in to add context. They are the real MVPs.

Thank you to everyone who witnessed me being a post-op brain tumor patient during a national meeting. LOL.

Also, I am incredibly lucky to work with investigators who understand how scrambled my brain is at the moment. We are all watching me re-piece cognition in real time. This is why brain tumors are so unique and are a special area of study.