Local doctor discusses diagnosis

Last May, during Brain Tumor Awareness Month, a letter to the editor by Douglas Corwin Jr. appeared in the Observer-Reporter that urged readers to find out more about brain tumors.
“The very day it was in the paper, somebody was knocking at my door,” said Corwin.
At the door was a man whose wife was living with a brain tumor. He had read the letter, looked up Corwin’s address and drove right over.
“He asked me if I could call his wife,” recalls Corwin. “I did, and she started crying. She was so happy to talk to somebody who was also going through it.”
Corwin found out he had a brain tumor on Nov. 29, 2012. On that day, the 51-year-old physician had just started lunch in the break room of his Washington practice when he had a seizure. Corwin remembers that his head turned right and up, and he wanted to speak, but wasn’t able. The next thing he remembers is waking up on the floor with an ambulance crew surrounding him. He had never before had a seizure.
Tests that day, and a brain biopsy the next, confirmed the presence of an oligodendroglioma, a tumor that originates in the oligodendrocytes, one of the types of cells that make up the supportive, or glial, tissues of the brain.
“My knowledge of brain tumors was fairly superficial. As a primary care doctor, I knew about the bad ones,” said Corwin, who, when he first received the diagnosis, predicted the worst.
But he started reading everything he could get his hands on, and with Dr. Jan Drappatz, his neuro-oncololgist, formulated a treatment plan.
Corwin underwent chemotherapy treatments for five consecutive days every month for a year.
During treatment, Corwin practiced part-time. When he completed treatment, he went back to his regular schedule.
“I was doing fine, no problems,” he said. “The scans showed (the tumor) was smaller. It’s never going to go away completely, but it was smaller. Everybody was happy.”
About a year-and-a-half after completing treatments, though, he started to have spasms on the right side of his face. A scan revealed changes in the lesion.
This time, Corwin was treated with radiation and chemotherapy. His last treatments was two years ago.
Though oligodendrogliomas tend to return, Corwin is optimistic about future treatment options.
“It’s not that common,” said Corwin, who went gray in May and sold Brain Tumor Awareness shirts to benefit the Washington Health System Foundation.
According to the National Brain Tumor Society, about 700,000 Americans are living with a brain tumor.
Corwin said the discovery of his was pretty typical.
“A lot of times, people have seizures and find it, or have a scan and find it incidentally,” he said.
Unfortunately, said Corwin, there is not a lot of research on brain tumors. Now that he’s retired, he is dedicating time to education and awareness. And though he doesn’t offer medical advice, Corwin enjoys talking to others who are in similar situations and providing sources of accurate information.
“In the beginning, when I was first diagnosed, there was high anxiety. But it got better as time went on and I realized I wasn’t a goner yet. It made me appreciate family more. Lucy (Northrop Corwin, Observer-Reporter director of news and Corwin’s wife) was a rock through all of this,” he said. “(The diagnosis) allowed me to focus on other things.”
For more information, visit www.braintumor.org or www.abta.org.