Q&A

A Little Life + Brain Cancer Update

I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I would give a little update and answer some of the questions people have been asking me!

First update: I’ve started my targeted therapy! I’ll talk more about what that means in one of the questions below, but so far, it’s going well.

The first couple of weeks were definitely an adjustment. I also decided to put a pause on keto because it just wasn’t agreeing with my stomach while starting treatment. My treatment is a pill that I take every day, and initially it was making me pretty nauseated. Thankfully, that has since resolved!

Who knows—maybe I’ll want to try keto again in the future. I still fully believe it can be a beneficial diet; I just don’t think the timing was right for me. I’m proud that I stuck with it for almost three months, though, and I believe it was good preparation for my body going into treatment.

So, with that little update out of the way, here are some of the questions I get asked most often about my brain tumour.

When did your symptoms start? How long have you had your tumour?

I would have had this tumour for years.

Looking back, I can remember getting bouts of vertigo as far back as 2018 (honestly even earlier), and even going to the ER because I felt like something was off. I would probably go back even further, to around 2015, when I started noticing personality changes—things like not being able to control my emotions as well as I used to.

Over the past few years, I also struggled with my memory, but I blamed it on stress and anxiety. And honestly, there was a lot going on. We were selling a house, moving, starting new pastoral positions, and my dad was going through his own cancer battle.

There were a lot of things I could explain away.

Another thing I look back on now is how sick I would get. When I got sick, I got SICK. That probably should have been another red flag.

It was around January/February 2025 when I really knew something wasn’t right and that I needed help. I started having outbursts—and I mean uncontrollable outbursts of emotion. I was so confused about why they were happening. My memory was also getting so bad that during church services, I needed to read announcements word-for-word off a screen.

So, how long did I have the tumour?

Probably a looooonnngggg time.

What is my targeted therapy? How does it work?

The brain is incredibly complex to treat because of something called the blood-brain barrier. Its job is to protect the brain by preventing many substances from entering it—which is obviously a good thing! But when you’re trying to treat brain cancer, it can also make things difficult.

The medication I’m taking is a relatively new targeted therapy designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and target a specific mutation in my tumour cells. The goal is to interfere with the processes helping those cells grow and, hopefully, slow the progression of the tumour.

When people hear the word tumour, they sometimes picture one solid, defined mass. But when you look at my MRI, you can see the tumour as well as foggy-looking tissue surrounding it. That tissue is affected too.

That’s why my surgeons were honest from the beginning that they couldn’t simply “get it all.” With this type of tumour, the cells can infiltrate surrounding brain tissue, making it impossible to safely remove every single tumour cell.

This is also why I wasn’t afraid that having a biopsy or surgery would somehow cause the cancer to spread. The tumour was already diffuse and infiltrating the surrounding tissue.

Why did you decide to have a second surgery?

I already knew the targeted therapy was an option and that I could potentially go straight onto the medication.

But after reviewing my MRI again with my surgeon, he showed me a small area of tumour that he believed he could still safely remove.

Ultimately, the decision was mine.

I decided that if there was more tumour that could safely come out, I wanted it out. So I chose to go through surgery again, remove what we could, recover, and then apply to start the targeted therapy.

Once I started the medication, the plan was to stay on it rather than start and then stop for another surgery, so doing the second surgery first made the most sense to me. I salt don’t know if the drug company would have allowed me to start and then stop and then start again. It’s something you definitely need to be on consistently, so I wanted to make sure I got all the surgeries out of the way first.

What has been the hardest part of your recovery?

Honestly, one of the hardest things has been getting overwhelmed in certain environments.

If I’m somewhere busy or in a situation where a lot of attention is focused on me, I can get overwhelmed VERY easily. Still working through that one, haha.

Giving myself grace has also been difficult.

Not being able to do the kind of fitness and training I would normally do has been tough and, honestly, a bit of a head game.

I still struggle with retention and short-term memory, so I’m learning how to navigate that too. Even something as simple as reading my Bible has only recently become part of my regular routine again. Before, I could read a few chapters and then realize I wasn’t actually retaining what I had read.

And then there’s the fatigue.

I don’t think I realized how much fatigue would affect me. I need good, quality sleep just to function well day-to-day, and I’ve had to learn to respect what my body and brain need instead of constantly pushing past it.

Is there a cure for my type of cancer?

Medically speaking, there currently isn’t a cure for my type of diffuse brain cancer.

But unless Jesus does a miraculous healing—and I absolutely leave room for that—the reality is that the tumour cells that remain have the potential to eventually progress to a higher grade.

This fall, I’ll have my next MRI, which should give us a better idea of how well the medication is working to slow the progression.

So right now, we’re praying for a STABLE scan.

(Or shrinkage from Jesus. Wink. 😉)

When will you be back to leading worship?

When I’m able to better handle overstimulation and being in large rooms again.

That’s really the biggest hurdle right now.

I’m planning to try going to church with Andrew while he’s on vacation, so we’ll see how that goes and take it from there!

I’m learning not to put a timeline on everything. I want to come back when my brain and body are actually ready—not simply because I miss it.

How are you dealing with your diagnosis?

I try to stay positive and hopeful.

There are so many things about this diagnosis that I simply cannot control, and I’ve realized: why spend my time worrying about something I can’t change?

Worrying won’t change the diagnosis. It won’t change tomorrow.

And time is my biggest currency.

One thing I learned pretty quickly was to stop Googling my diagnosis. Every person is different. Some tumours progress quickly, while others progress much more slowly depending on the tumour type, genetics, mutations, treatment response, and so many other factors.

Brain cancer is also incredibly difficult and complex to treat, which is why research specifically focused on brain tumours is so important.

But beyond all of that, I have faith that God is bigger than my diagnosis.

Having cancer doesn’t mean I did something wrong—spiritually or physically.

We live in a broken world.

And if you know me and my husband, you know how seriously we take our faith and our desire to live holy lives. Trust me, we went through prayer, renouncing, deliverance, and pretty much everything you could think of…and nothing came up.

That was something I personally had to wrestle with as a pastor.

Sometimes sickness just comes.

I had to come to a place where I stopped trying to find something or someone to blame and instead asked myself:

How am I going to let God use this story?

So I’m choosing to make God and Jesus the centre of it.

Whether my story becomes one of miraculous healing and redemption, or whether God uses my journey to get the Gospel message out through the way I choose to walk through this—I want Him at the centre.

Because no matter what happens in this life, God is always good.

⸻

Final Thoughts

If I could wrap all of this up, I think it would simply be this: I don’t have control over a lot of what is happening in my body, but I do have control over where I place my trust.

And I choose to place it in Jesus.

This journey has stripped away a lot of noise. It’s made things very simple in some ways. I don’t always have answers, I don’t always have clarity, and I definitely don’t always feel strong—but I do have peace that doesn’t make sense in my circumstances.

There are days where I feel incredibly aware of my limitations, and there are days where I feel deeply grateful just to be alive, present, and able to love the people around me well. Both can exist at the same time.

I’ve learned that faith isn’t always loud or dramatic. Sometimes it’s just showing up. Sometimes it’s choosing gratitude when your body feels tired. Sometimes it’s trusting God with a future you can’t see.

And I think that’s where I am right now—learning to trust Him in the middle of it, not just at the end of it.

So thank you to everyone who has prayed, checked in, sent messages, or simply followed along quietly. It means more than I can say.

I don’t know exactly what the future holds, but I do know Who holds it.

And for today, that is enough.