Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma

So there's sarcoma.

Um, we went to Stanford to lab there for DIPG.

We went to, uh, UCSF, um, osteosarcoma, um, cancer, um, lab and met them.

And, um, another, uh, project that we funded was actually, um, is being run by an oncologist who was, um, gosh she was a remind me so they're all the stages and because when you're in the hospital you have you're assigned your primary oncologist but because you're living there obviously the oncologist doesn't live there and doesn't work 24 hours a day seven days a week so you see different oncologists and this is going to be cut out too what is it so it's like um You're residents and you're the...

Yeah.

As a transplanter, I stay away from DIPG, one of the most aggressive brain

tumors.

But now,

But you're actually seeing a longer survival than what we used to.

Because

DIPG, you used to

get a death sentence every six months very early.

If God is real and he's a guy, I would personally dedicate my entire life to taking him out.

Because what do you mean the creator of the DIPG child brain tumor that only exists in children? The creator of human men? The creator of hyena birth? The creator of the Prion? That guy? He's all knowing? If one guy created all of this, he's my number one enemy, dude.

Have you ever heard anything like that in your life? No, I'm not kidding.

Seriously.

Please listen to this.

If God is real and he's a guy, I would personally dedicate my entire life to taking him out.

Because what do you mean the creator of the DIPG child brain tumor that only exists in children? The creator of human men? The creator of hyena birth? The creator of the Prion? That guy? He's all knowing? If one guy created all of this, he's my number one enemy, dude.

I'm going to leave it there.

So when I was doing my work there, Nicole actually came and visited the research lab.

I was doing work on a pediatric brain cancer called DIPG or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.

And that work was being funded by a Live Like Bella research initiative grant.

And so Nicole had been going around to visit all the labs that were doing work under that initiative.

And so I got to know Nicole from that point on.

And as a grad student doing research, you can very easily get discouraged and stuck, I think, in your research.

Like my whole goal, DIPG affects around 300 kids in the U.S. per year.

And, you know, the survival, you know, we don't really have any survivors.

My wife took him to the ER, and then she called me, and, uh, they did like a, what they call like a dirty MRI, just a, a quick one for a couple minutes just to see if there's something going on, 'cause he was presenting like he had a stroke, basically, and, uh, they found a mass in his head.

And then so they told us we needed, uh, to do a sedated MRI, and we left for, uh, St. Jude, like, the next day and did a sedated MRI and found out that he had a DIPG brain stem tumor, which is like a fast-growing, fast-acting, uh, brain tumor that there's no known cure for.

And, uh, they gave us a prognosis of nine to 12 months, and we got six.

And we did, uh, man, we went through everything with him, uh, to try to, to do things the right way, and, uh, we completely changed everything.

I'm always happy to talk about Chad.

Um, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor called DIPG three days before his fourth birthday.

And he, um, was just an incredibly energetic kid, beautiful.

He was very different than CJ and Tommy.

And so it was one of those things I had listened to it and it piqued my interest of kind of what happened.

And after some searching, I found out that his sister had passed away from DIPG, which is the same brain tumor that the JMU superfan John Paul has, who I wrote about a little bit, I guess about a year and a half ago now.

So it was one of those things where I was like, wow, that's a really crazy and sad coincidence because it is a very rare form of cancer.

And so I reached out to the communication staff at JMU asking if, you know, to see if Pat would be willing to sit down and talk to me about it.

It's a really aggressive brain tumor.

It's called DIPG.

It's very rare, aggressive.

He's fighting for his life, basically.