VALDOSTA To be whole again, the desire that sometimes overwhelms chair-bound Mandy Painter, fuels the Realtor each day through walking lessons during physical therapy and it's also what could see her through a cutting-edge program in Boston, where world-class neurologists can reawaken her cerebellum and see the mother of three to her feet again.
Systemic auto-antibodies began searching Mandys body for cancer cells back as early as 2008 the defensive antibodies ultimately attacked proteins in her cerebellum that resembled the target cells in the tumor that was later discovered in her right breast.
Now, everything that I want to do, I have to depend on someone else to do it and it breaks my heart to have to do that, says Mandy. Sometimes, I do sit around and feel sorry for myself. But I have to look at things around me and for the opportunities to come up. If I dont push ahead, I wont get anywhere.
Based on what her doctors told her, she has literally been making baby steps as physical therapists work with her to retrain muscles that had regressed in movement memory to their beginnings, according to Mandy. The physical therapy shes been doing has reinvigorated her limbs with ginger movements, but she says it hasnt sparked her cerebellums full drive.
Hopefully, in going to Massachusetts, theyll be able to do whatever needs to be done to the cerebellum to make it work properly.
At one time, I couldnt even bathe, at all, and (caretaker, ex-husband) Phil would have to bathe me, completely, she says. And then I got to where I could bathe a little bit and Phil would wash my hair. And then finally, I got to where I could wash my hair. But I still have to sit on a seat while I wash my hair. So its taken me a year to bathe on my own.
If a representative from Dr. Jeremy Schmahmanns office beckoned her to Boston today, it would be bittersweet news for Mandy and Phil Painter. Phil quit his job as Mandy wove in and out of some of Floridas best hospitals, where she had to be placed on life support 10 times and resuscitated at least 14 times during her hospital stays.
But Mandy has made progress, and it prompts the pair to attempt the possibly quarter-year program in Boston.
Time in Schmahmanns Ataxia Unit, with access to treatments that would prompt neuralgic studies, could completely cure the paraneoplastic syndrome that has muted Mandys cerebellum in addition to the half-a-dozen other neuralgic and neurological disorders that shes endured.
All research on the paraneoplastic syndrome indicates that it happens to 50 percent of all cancer patients, says Phil. I think as they also do studies in looking at the paraneoplastic syndrome and the anti-RI protein. There is a chance, from what I research, some people who are having cancer may not be dying from the actual cancer. It may be the paraneoplastic syndrome, like she has gotten. Im not a medical expert, but theres got to be a correlation there because of what I saw it do to her body.
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Woman fights to live after cancer