What is a brain tumor?
Brain tumors are the most common solid tumors in children. Approximately 3,140 children under age 20 in the US are diagnosed with primary brain tumors each year. Primary brain tumors start in the brain and generally do not spread outside the brain tissue. Brain tumors, either malignant or benign, are tumors that originate in the cells of the brain. A tumor is an abnormal growth of tissue.
A benign tumor does not contain cancer cells and usually, once removed, does not recur. Most benign brain tumors have clear borders, meaning they do not invade surrounding tissue. These tumors can, however, cause symptoms similar to cancerous tumors because of their size and location in the brain.
Malignant brain tumors contain cancer cells. Malignant brain tumors are usually fast growing and invade surrounding tissue. Malignant brain tumors very rarely spread to other areas of the body, but may recur after treatment. Sometimes, brain tumors that are not cancer are called malignant because of their size and location, and the damage they can do to vital functions of the brain.
Brain tumors can occur at any age. Brain tumors that occur in infants and children are very different from adult brain tumors, both in terms of the type of cells and the responsiveness to treatment.
Katalyn layed on her lumpy matress in the ladies rest, staring at the cieling and listening to the rain patter on the roof. Musical notes poured under the cracks of her door and window, winking with the promise of sound and motion. She closed her eyes and covered her ears, trying to shut the music that kept pouring into her mind out. She had learned long ago normal people didn't hear like her, didn't see like her- they couldn't hear the music in everything or see the notes. Katarkan lore said music was inherent in nature, and she did hear the sounds no one else heard in the world around her. Saw them too. Had since she was a child. And as always, just at the edge of her perception was the hole. That gaping void in everything, she could feel it calling to her. Once when she was very young, she let herself slip into the hole. She slept for a whole month while her worried family kept her alive by feeding her sips of broth. The village doctor called it a Coma.
There were other differences, too. She knew she wasn't normal. She had her queer fits, her sudden mood swings. No one could explain it, but she knew it was because of the hole somehow. It made her different. And she didn't like to be alone with it. Sometimes it would go away and she'd be fine, but usually she hated to be alone. Of course no one understood, they couldn't see the hole.
Only her...