Carling Muir: A Stunning Comeback
The inspirational story of Carling Muir, a 24 year old Maple Ridge, British Columbia woman who is battling brain cancer.
Discovering the most precious gift of all is not easy, because so often times it sits tucked away in our furthest reaches, willing to reveal itself only to those in search of the purest level of understanding. http://www.thisislangara.ca/stories/carling-muir.html
Carling Muir has found hers, and in the near 14-months since she has suffered a grand mal seizure and had to undergo emergency brain surgery to remove part of a malignant tumour, it has given her both a pristine focus and an unwavering belief that she can make a positive difference in the world.
“It’s weird to say but cancer has almost been one of the best things …. that has ever happened to me,” the 20-year-old basketball player with Vancouver’s Langara College Falcons reasons. “There are parts of it I also hate. I hate how it has made my family go through a living hell and at points made my body go through a living hell.
“But,” she continues, “I get to look at life with a totally different perspective.”
I appreciate things more.
Since profiling her courageous struggles… in The Province… last April (online at www.theprovince.com/campuscorner), Muir has made what can only be described as a miraculous comeback to the court.
After all, who returns to the college basketball world following brain surgery, liver infections and chemotherapy, not to mention the mountainous mental hurdles they bring, to be a better player than they were before?
“Yes,” marvels her head coach Mike Evans. “By the end of the summer she was playing better than she had ever played.”
If ‘incredible’ is the only word to describe the fact that Muir is leading the entire B.C. Colleges Athletic Association in scoring this season at 18.8 points per game and is fourth in rebounding at 8.9 per game, then there is simply no way to describe what she did on Nov. 17, just three days shy of year from the day of her seizure in the same Langara gym.
That evening, she arrived to play after the fifth day of her regular five-day chemotherapy sessions and scored 29 points, virtually half of Langara’s total output, in a 67-59 loss to Camosun College.
Muir’s reaction?
“I don’t want to let the cancer run my life,” she says. “I just feel that the better I do out there, the better I am fighting my cancer.”
A scan last year following her surgery showed that much of the tumour still remained with her. But last month, she was thrilled to see how much it had shrunk due to her treatment schedule.
Yet she refuses to let the fight be only about herself because the gift asks her to do so much more.
At this Friday and Saturday’s men’s and women’s home games at Langara (6, 8 p.m. tips), half of the gate proceeds will be directed to the B.C. Cancer Foundation’s Neuro-Oncology Research Fund.
As well, on-line contributions to the cause can be made by visiting Muir’s BCCF website: http://donate.bccancerfoundation.com/goto/CarlingMuir.
“I think hope and inspiration are two very powerful things and I get to give those qualities to other people,” Muir says. “If it wasn’t for the cancer I wouldn’t able to do things like this fund raiser.
“I hate that, if you go by the medical records, it’s going to cut my life substantially short,” she continues. “Most people live another three to five years and the most anyone has lived is 20 more. But if I get to do all these things by the time I am 40, I am going to be satisfied with the life that I have had.
“But the way I look at it, someone had to set 20 years as the first limit. So why can’t I be the one that sets the next limit?”
Thankfully, Carling Muir has found the gift. It’s the one that you give to everyone else.
Muir had a new type of surgery at the Vancouver General Hospital.
Dr. Toyota and a Colorado-based surgeon utilized the only machine in Canada that is capable of this new Neuroblate surgical technique. It was the generous donation of a local family which helped to fund this new machine, so Carling hopes her story will inspire more donations so that research can continue to find less invasive and successful treatments for cancer patients.
Tune into “The National” or CBC on November 21, or view it here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/carling-muir-s-brain-cancer-procedure-1.3862166
More information on the innovative Vero Machine: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/cutting-edge-vero-radiation-machine-bringing-hope-to-b-c-cancer-patients-1.3037071
How to donate to the BC Cancer Foundation: http://bccancerfoundation.com
Twenty-seven Canadians a day are diagnosed with a brain tumour. Often, the prognosis isn’t good, but it might be improved thanks to a new technique that targets tumours deep inside the brain that are too dangerous to remove surgically.
The technique was created by Mark Torchia and Richard Tyc of the University of Manitoba and consists of heating the cancerous tissue with a laser, making it more receptive to chemotherapy.
Carling Muir of B.C. is hoping the method, known as NeuroBlate, will help her survive the rare form of recurring brain cancer that she has been living with for the past decade.
Muir, was diagnosed when she was 19, has taken some inspiration from how Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie has handled his own diagnosis of brain cancer this past summer.
Carling Muir has a rare form of brain cancer. Now she’s undergoing a new Canadian procedure that attacks the tumour with a laser.
“I worry more about, like, what it does to my family? That’s the part that gets me,” she told CBC’s Reg Sherren.
Sherren was granted exclusive access to the operating room at Vancouver General Hospital where Muir underwent the NeuroBlate procedure.
Watch the video to see how surgeons used the laser ablation method to target the cancer cells in Muir’s left frontal lobe and read more about the procedure below.
Carling Muir’s Brain Cancer Procedure 2:52
How does it work?
The goal is to target abnormal cells such as cancer while protecting healthy tissue surrounding the tumour.
NeuroBlate was developed in Manitoba. It combines a surgical laser, MRI imaging and software to ablate or intensely heat diseased tissue precisely.
Neurosurgeon Brian Toyota at Vancouver General Hospital has performed the NeuroBlate method about twenty times to date. ‘Laser by itself won’t cure cancer …. But for the right person, it will be part of that combination of treatments,’ he said. (CBC)
Doctors review images of a patient’s brain taken during diagnostic tests, and then chart the best path toward lesions or tumours with the device.
Surgeons drill a small hole, about the circumference of a pencil, in the patient’s skull to guide the laser. It is designed to heat and destroy tumours.
What are some of the advantages and disadvantages?
Using the minimally invasive tool may lessen pain and reduce length of stay in hospital compared with open surgery.
‘It’s not going to be the treatment for everybody. But for the right person, it will be part of that combination of treatments.’
– Brian Toyota, neurosurgeon, Vancouver General Hospital
The technology is not appropriate for every tumour or lesion, type or location. For example, it may be too difficult to use on large or irregularly shaped tumours.
Depending on how the laser probe is placed in the brain and how much heat is applied, bleeding or permanent brain damage may occur.
The long-term benefits and risks aren’t yet known.
Who is a candidate?
Health Canada licensed the system for neurosurgeons to kill or coagulate soft tissue. It is not intended to cure, prevent, mitigate or diagnose disease.
It is up to physicians to use their clinical judgment and experience when deciding to use the system.
Where is it offered?
In Canada, Dr. Brian Toyota at Vancouver General Hospital has performed the procedure about 20 times. About 20 different hospitals in the U.S. use the NeuroBlate system.“Laser by itself won’t cure cancer,” Toyota told Sherren. “It’s not going to be the treatment for everybody. But for the right person, it will be part of that combination of treatments.”
How long has it existed?
A Winnipeg-based privately held company, Monteris Medical, developed the tool that Torchia and Tyc invented.
Governor General honours Manitoba brain laser inventors
Brain cancer laser surgery treatment a first in Canada
It was licensed by Health Canada in late 2014 and first used in 2015, Monteris said.