A woman has shared the “miracle” that is her continued survival – after doctors told her she had just six months left to live over a decade ago.
Grace Wethor was just 13 when a mass was discovered in one of the most dangerous areas of the brain, and she was given the terrifying news that her chance of surviving was just 8%, and she was unlikely to see the end of the year.
But incredibly, the young woman has gone on to survive 10 years, despite not being able to undergo any treatment.
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“My doctors can’t explain why I have survived,” 23-year-old Grace, a filmmaker and cancer legislation advocate, told Need To Know.
“Brain tumours are still, in many ways, a guessing game.
“We don’t fully understand what causes them, and we don’t know how to cure them.
“I still have my tumour, but miraculously, it has not grown.
“It hit ten years stable in January.”
Grace, who is based in Los Angeles and originally from Minneapolis, US, was just entering her teenage years in January 2015 when an MRI scan found the mass in the pons of the brain.
She said: “By that point, I had been in and out of doctors’ offices for six months trying to figure out why I was having headaches, fatigue, and seizure-like episodes.
“The pons is located in the brain stem and is considered arguably the most dangerous area of the brain to have a tumour.
“Once these tumours grow, they quickly take over the body’s functions like the heartbeat and breathing.
“Because of the complexity of the brain stem, doctors aren’t able to biopsy or do surgery on these tumours.
“This means that as soon as these tumours start growing, there isn’t much that can be done to help the patient – especially because chemotherapy and radiation also have a slim chance of working.”
When Grace was diagnosed, she had an estimated survival rate of 8% for six months, and was sent home with no further medical steps.
She said: “Although that was definitely the scariest part of my medical journey, I feel like that moment was actually a blessing in disguise.
“Because my tumour is so difficult to treat, I was able to leave the hospital and spend my ‘last six months’ doing what I love.
“During those first six months, when I thought they might be my last, I made it a mission to do something creative every single day.
“I painted, taught myself how to play guitar, and made fashion a form of self-expression.
“My mom and I would fly to Los Angeles on weekends, go to museums and take photoshoots.
“She made sure that every day was an adventure and her doing that was crucial to keeping my mind off my diagnosis and current health circumstances.”
Since then, Grace has been on a “wait and watch protocol” – receiving MRIs every few months to monitor the tumour.
She said: “There isn’t much more they can do for me.
“The hope is that one day a trial or new treatment will emerge that can help tumours in this area of the brain.
“There have been some advancements but we still have a long way to go.
“Most of the tumours in this area of the brain have a less than 1% survival rate so it’s a tricky problem to solve.”
Incredibly, the young woman says she is generally “very healthy”.
Grace said: “From the outside, you’d never know I’m living with a brain tumour.
“I definitely still have days where I experience headaches and symptoms, but over the past ten years, I’ve learned how to manage my ‘new normal’.
“It’s not always perfect, but I’ve found ways to work with my body rather than against it.
“I pace myself when I need to, listen to my limits, and prioritise things that keep me mentally and physically balanced.
“Most days, I’m able to live a full and relatively normal life.”
Grace says her condition has given her a different outlook on life.
She said: “I try not to take anything for granted.
“I don’t assume I have time.
“I try to live every day as an adventure, because no one is guaranteed any amount of time – brain tumour or no brain tumour – and this experience has made that impossible to ignore.
“The whole experience forced me to see the world in a more beautiful and attentive way.
“A lot of people came up to me and said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry. That’s the worst thing that can happen to somebody.’
“But I realised that I don’t really see it that way.
“I had challenged the context of what it means to fight a brain tumour and somehow tricked my brain into seeing it as the best thing that ever happened to me.
“I thought that if I could do that for the hardest thing I had ever faced in my life, I could most likely challenge the context of little day-to-day things too and decide to see things with beauty and love instead of anger and hate.”
That energy has gone into Grace thriving in her career as a filmmaker, writing a bestselling fiction book, ‘Seven Thompson and the Art of Remembering’, and channelling her efforts into fighting for brain cancer legislation in Washington DC.
And while every three months she faces the same worry – that, this time, the tumour will have grown – she doesn’t let it take over her life.
She added: “The fear that the next scan will be the one where they find growth never fully goes away.
“Every time I go in for a scan, there’s a quiet moment of wondering – but I’ve learned to live with that uncertainty rather than letting it control me.
“I try not to spiral into ‘what ifs’, because if I did, I’d miss the life happening right in front of me.
“I don’t know what my next scan will show, but I do know I’ve made it 10 years longer than anyone expected – and that gives me more hope than fear.”
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