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Page 3: Veteran Fighting for His Life
| Thursday, November 19, 2015
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Couple invests life savings to THE HOLIDAYS pay brain surgery in U.S. AT for HIGHSTREET By KURT LANGMANN Aldergrove Star
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A local man is awaiting brain surgery in Los Angeles with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Tom and his wife Christina are hoping that a quarter-million-dollar procedure will put a stop to the blinding headaches that have plagued Tom for the past 20 years. To this end they have sold off their business interests and heavy equipment, put their home up for sale and taken out a major bank loan. They OFFICIAL have also been sup- TREE LIGHTING ported by+ donations of almost SANTA’S ARRIVAL TO HIGHSTREET $40,000 to a crowd funding + HOLIDAY SHOW website in Tom’s name (see details below). SATURDAY NOV 21 AT 5PM This is because the proSHOWS EVERY SATURDAY AT 5PM, NOV 21 – DEC 19 cedure is not funded by the Canadian medical plan and in any event there isn’t a neurosurgeon in the country who performs this surgical procedure. The couple even had to pay out of their own pocket for an MRI at the private False Creek medical facility, due to the KURT LANGMANN PHOTO waiting list. Tom and Christina Kettering are now in Los Angeles for Tom’s planned surgical operation. That scan found what they believe to be the cause completely debilitating,” said couple have tried different After four years of trying to neurosurgeons in the U.S. who of Tom’s migraines, a cystic Christina. therapies and clinics, includ- go through the Canadian sys- enter the skull and remove our feature term the deposit: Be free to live life on your terms, invest tumor on his pineal gland “Tom when says allyou the time thatin ours. ing the Mayo Clinic, without Invest tem, herinparents re-mortgaged cysts. And the success rate deep inside his brain. he feels he is living a slow success. their home and held fundraiswas 30 months at 2.00high. %* More than a dozen “I haven’t been able to death. The constant pain has “Thousands and thousands ers to pay for the procedure in Canadians have had this prowork at all for the past three taken away any quality of life of dollars were spent on natu- the U.S. cedure performed and all of Call or visit a branch today! years,” Tom told The Star on possible and there are many ropath, chiro, massage, acuWaldmann’s surgery was them no longer suffer from the Friday. days that the thought of not puncture, botox, hyperbaric done at a Texas hospital in symptoms. “I’ve been prescribed the living at all would be easier chamber treatments, myofas- March. “ We
recommended by a Canadian neurosurgeon. However, Kettering never saw a neurosurgeon. He had to wait two years to see a neurologist and has not been able to get an appointment to see a neurosurgeon. Their MLA Darryl Plecas visited the couple on Thursday and said he would try to make a case for coverage by the B.C. Medical Services Plan in Victoria, but could make no promises. “I appreciate that he’s going to go to bat for us,” said Christina. Dr. Hrayr Shahinian will perform Kettering’s surgery on Nov. 17 in Los Angeles at the Mission Community Hospital. A study recently published in the medical journal of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, found more than a year after surgery, 94 per cent of patients who had this kind of cyst were either pain-free or had an improvement in their symptoms. A Facebook post by Christina on Tuesday morning (just prior to Star press deadline) said that Tom was out of surgery at 11 a.m. and “the doctor says he is doing well… (and) he has been moved to ICU. I can’t see him for about an hour yet but I am so thankful he made it through that part OK.” Tom, 35, was raised *Terms and conditions apply.