f i r s t
p e r s o n
FROM PHYSICIAN TO
PATIENT – AND BACK
I
BY KYLE POWERS (M.D., ’13)
n spring 2014, I began to notice frequent mild to moderate
headaches three to four times per week. They felt like normal
work, proceed with imaging. In hindsight, that wasn’t the best decision.
On Aug. 7, 2014, with my headache throbbing worse than ever, I woke
tension headaches. By July, I was taking six to eight ibuprofen up nauseated and vomiting at 4 a.m. and called 911. The last thing I
per day. I knew something wasn’t right, but I still wanted to remember from that night was the ER doctor telling me I had a large “solid
believe it wasn’t serious. and cystic mass in the right frontal lobe.”
Finally I saw my primary care provider, a nice physician
Before medical school, everything I knew about brain tumors was from
assistant. She offered to order a CT scan “if I’d like,” but she agreed it my father’s own tragic experience with a glioblastoma multiforme, or
was most likely secondary to stress or even migraines. We decided to do a GBM, in the late 1990s. After two terrifying weeks of knowing that the
trial of prophylactic beta blockers for possible migraines and, if that didn’t mass in my brain was a GBM, I learned about the immunochemical and
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