Marie Bruno

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.  Here is my story...

Last October, Marie had several mini strokes.  She also was diagnosed with COPD and had to start using oxygen.  In the early part of 2017, she started doing pulmonary rehabilitation.  She was working out several times a week to improve her breathing and feeling great.  Unfortunately, on July 15th she had a second stroke.  She left the hospital a few days later with no serious side effects.  On July 23rd, she had a third stroke.  This time she had temporary left side paralysis.  The doctors were surprised by the third stroke being that she was already on the very strongest blood thinners available.  This caused them to do further testing.  It revealed a tumor in her lungs that was diagnosed as lung cancer.  There were also some tiny spots on her brain that were of concern to the doctors.  Some of the doctors felt that these were tiny clots from other strokes, while other believed they were tiny tumors.  The initial feeling was this was Stage Four lung cancer that had spread to her brain.   She was released to start rehabilitation in a facility on August 7th.

Marie's first oncology meeting was on August 8th.  The doctors decided to wait to do any treatment on her brain since they did not agree on the MRI results.  ( clots or tumors)  She will have an additional MRI to recheck her brain in 6-8 weeks.  The doctors feel they will have a better picture of what is going on at that time.   The doctors are eager to focus on treating the tumor in her lung, as they believe that it what is causing her to have repeat strokes.  They also decided it would be best for her to get stronger for treatment by rehabbing and drinking lots of water, and they wanted to wait on the genetic testing to decide the best course of treatment for the cancer.  Marie is thankful for your prayers and concern.