Beyond Brain Tumours

Balancing care, recovery, and school: how support, compassion and advocacy pave the way | Part 1

• Episode 10

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Welcome back, everyone!  

In this episode, our host Ben Seewald chats with Patrick, a Registered Nurse and a brain tumour survivor. Having just started nursing school, Patrick shared his experiences facing a brain tumour as a young adult and balancing care, recovery and coursework. Together, they discuss Patrick’s journey of strength and resilience and the importance of kindness and patient advocacy.  

In part 2, Patrick dives into the heart of his support network- his family and friends, and the important role they played in supporting him through treatment, recovery and school. Patrick also discusses patient advocacy and what it means to him. Tune in for an open conversation about compassion, community and advocacy. 

For additional information, you may visit:  

Medical alert bracelets: MedicAlert Foundation Canada | We Speak When You Can't 

Support groups: Support Groups - Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada 

Advocating for yourself: Advocating for Yourself - Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada  

Learn more about Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada at BrainTumour.ca. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and Linkedin.

Ben Seewald:

Welcome to Beyond Brain Tumours, a podcast of inspiration, hope and support for the brain tumour community. I'm your host, Ben Seewald, a fund development specialist at Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. In this episode, it is my pleasure to chat with Patrick Bélec, a registered nurse with an extensive background in critical care and education, currently working on the intensive care unit at Health Sciences North in Sudbury, ontario. Patrick has extensive experience and passion for healthcare advocacy and patient education, and is known for his enthusiasm, humor and kindness. We are so lucky to have the chance to discuss his journey of strength and resilience from both sides of the stethoscope. Welcome, patrick. It's great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited about this and I think this is going to be a really great conversation. So kind of try and bring me back to the summer of 2012. You're 18 years old, excited to be starting university at Laurentian in the fall. Tell us a little bit more about that time in your life.

Patrick Bélec:

So I was getting ready, as you said, to go to university. I was getting back in June, just about when I was getting ready to graduate, I was getting some blood work done for nursing school work done for nursing school and I told my doctor just in passing like I've been having some headaches. It's like my, my brain is in a bag and there's pressure at the front and in the back and it's it's weird, it doesn't happen all the time. It's like hmm, he took my blood pressure, it was a little high. So he's like let's send you for a CT scan, which kind of surprised me. Usually, from what I've heard, you need to push a little more to get some imaging done. But in July I went for the CT scan. It was clear. So I'm like okay, it might just be a few different things going on, right.

Patrick Bélec:

Um, I was getting ready to go to uh, not only go to university, but move out of my parents place, live independently, go on, start on the varsity swim team, just get used to the university and just a residence life too. And yeah, I was slowly having more symptoms. Looking back, I'm able to say I was having more symptoms, I was more tired, I felt like I was going to faint when I was exercising, when I was doing dryland practice. It was just odd little things. And and in mid-July, august, I started noticing that my vision of my left eye was, just to say, a little off and maybe I needed new glasses.

Patrick Bélec:

So I think like two or three days before moving from my parents' place I went to my optometrist and he he looked at my eyes, he did a very like detailed eye exam and the one or two, one or two, and he said there's nothing structurally wrong with your eye, like you don't need new glasses. But I was still not able to see the letters. Just with my left eye I could see the little blotches where the letters were, but it wasn't clear. And he said it's either vascular or neurological, so either blood vessels or the brain, and he had made a referral for an ophthalmologist in North Bay, which is where he was too for November. So it's okay, we're going to wait and see how things go until then and I'll keep an eye, quite literally, on my vision.

Ben Seewald:

And probably any of those individual symptoms. Like you know, I I remember being 18 myself and like none of those are red flags in and of themselves, but when you start adding them up all of a sudden, it becomes pretty scary, pretty quick.

Patrick Bélec:

Mm, hmm, yeah, and it's. It's really the division that kept, like bringing us back to oh, it might not be stress, or it might not be school or dehydration or growth spurts or whatever it might be. It might not be that, because people don't typically go blind from growing up or from being stressed out or exercising or being dehydrated chronically. There's something else going on.

Ben Seewald:

And then so, what steps did you take next?

Patrick Bélec:

So I started school. I was very, very tired. I could take four-hour naps in the middle of my day in between classes, which was kind of good that I lived on residence on campus because I could just go take a nap. I remember feeling really, really cold, but kind of like your bones feel cold and looking at back it's. Those were like like I had a few of the symptoms of hypothyroidism, so my tumour affected all my hormones, so my thyroid was going down. I could see a decrease in sex drive and kind of my libido was going down again. My testosterone was dropping.

Patrick Bélec:

I was drinking quite a bit more and I mean like drinking juice, water and all of that, and I was just like always thirsty and I'm like, oh, it's normal. I'm on the varsity swim team, I'm exercising, I'm active. I don't always have time to drink, but it was unusual, I would get up during the night to go pee quite often and again at that time I'm like it's, it's normal, it's just how it is when there are so many different things happening in your life at that time, right and so exactly what is usual behavior is kind of a little bit up in the air yeah.

Patrick Bélec:

So it's really when I went back home for Thanksgiving that I noticed that like things were just not going right. I was having lots of kind of ups and downs with my mood and I would just like call my parents sobbing and I didn't know why. It was just like that overwhelming emotions just coming out. And I remember when I was getting ready to pack to go back to school after Thanksgiving and I just sat in the kitchen and I just started bawling and my mom said you know what? Like we have too many red flags. It's time we go to the emergency room and go in North Bay. So my parents live in Sturgeon Falls. We went to North Bay half an hour away instead of going back to Sudbury, which is an hour away, because we wanted answers. And we wanted answers now because things weren't improving and things were getting worse.

Ben Seewald:

So you went to North Bay emergency room, and then is that where you got your diagnosis.

Patrick Bélec:

Yeah, so we did the typical waiting five hours. Probably longer now, but we waited a good five hours in the waiting room because having a headache and having vision issues, especially if it's not acute, if it's not sudden, you won't go in front of people. You'll have to wait your low priority.

Ben Seewald:

Well, that's what I see with a lot of the brain tumour community. Is that because the symptoms are all so general and it could be a number of other things it's a challenge definitely to get that priority status.

Patrick Bélec:

Yeah, oh, absolutely. And again, people with brain tumours, when they'll pass a line is when they have seizures and it's the first time they're having a seizure. Then they'll cut the line and they'll have a quick access to a doctor. But to go back to me, we did the five-hour waiting, then we did maybe an hour or so waiting in a patient room and we had the doctor that came by and she was absolutely brilliant. She took her time to really like sit down and listen not only to my concerns but to my mom's concerns too. And my mom said like I am not the crazy mom exaggerating, like we did X, y and Z and all those things showed nothing.

Patrick Bélec:

Like he went to see his optometrist, he we had the CT scan in July, we had this done and this done and nothing showed up. But my son is going blind and I want to know why. So she was a big advocate in that point. Because I didn't know really how to maneuver the health care system. I didn't have many experiences and the experiences I did have was when I was a kid, right, um, so sorry then you got, you got a scan, Is that right?

Patrick Bélec:

Yes, so my this doctor scheduled an MRI for the next day, which even in Grey's anatomy and MRI within 24 hours is extremely rare, Like there's usually a pretty long waiting list. But she was able to talk to the radiologist and get me on and the next day is when I got my diagnosis.

Ben Seewald:

Oh, wow, so goodness, yeah. And and what was that like when the news hit.

Patrick Bélec:

So it was a different doctor that came by because they had switched doctors and I didn't know him. I don't remember him introducing himself. He just came by and said we got the results from your MRI you have a brain tumour. I know it's shitty news, but I'm on the phone with Ottawa and Sudbury to see who's going to take you. I'm I'm sorry it's. I know it's a shitty news, but do you mind traveling? And we were like no, like my family lives in Quebec. We've traveled many, many, many hours over the years. So he's like okay, I'll be right back. And I asked him before he left, what about swimming and what about school. He said stop everything. And that's when it hit right, because I had the little voice in my head that said, like you have a brain tumour before he said it yeah. So I was kind of relieved to hear that part. But the other part of like stop, stop everything, that like all your independence that you were starting to gain, stop that.

Ben Seewald:

And that's when it really hit me yeah, and it also sounds like that doctor was a little bit more kind of what we think of when we think of health-care professionals, kind of very straight to the point kind of dealing with the symptoms as they were, and so it's wonderful that you also had the doctor kind of dealing with the symptoms as they were.

Ben Seewald:

Um, yeah, and so it's wonderful that you also had the, uh, the, the doctor kind of sit down with you and listen and take the time to get to know you a little bit better. Um, so then where did you end up having your treatment then?

Patrick Bélec:

So we, we, we let my dad come in because the nurses were blocking him to come to to ER . Um, my mom went to get him and, like my mom and I had our like just start crying moment and, uh, I remember her like there's some moments in life that you just remember so clearly and I remember her going from one side of the bed to the other side of the bed and just holding me and I had the mental image at that point of like a mom holding her newborn, like it was just, and then she's like, oh, I need to get your dad. So she went to get my dad, came back and, um, we had kind of stopped crying at that point, but then she started crying again, telling my dad. And then my dad came over and we kind of agreed that we would all take this one step at a time, because the what ifs were were too big at that point and he didn't explain where the tumour was, how big it was, if it was, if it looked like it was malignant or non-cancerous, and we didn't know, we didn't have any answers Went back home, packed up our stuff and then we went to Ottawa.

Patrick Bélec:

I spent about a week there getting scans, getting different kind of scans. Talking to many specialists, so from the neurologists, neurosurgeons I also got to meet and know what an endocrinologist is, so a doctor that specializes in hormones. I was also asked in that first week of treatment have your nipples been lactating? And as an 18- 18 year- guy I was like what my nipples can do, that, wow, yeah, and luckily they they been lactating. But I think it would have been the one thing that would have thrown me over the edge, like having your nipples lactate because of a brain tumour.

Ben Seewald:

That would be pretty bizarre.

Patrick Bélec:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Seewald:

Yeah, Um, so sorry. Do you have any like metrics to share on, like your tumour size, how many stitches you got?

Patrick Bélec:

So I didn't have the surgery at that first point. Okay, they actually sent me home. So I went back home and did remote learning before it was a thing Right, and I learned remotely. My mom would do my readings just because I had trouble with my vision, especially the left eye was kind of having some double vision, so my mom would read for me. I was kind of having some double vision, so my mom would read for me. She would type my essay so I would tell her what I wanted her to read and she would read it for me. Oh my goodness, or type it for me, sorry. So she would do that. I would kind of try to keep up with work from school.

Patrick Bélec:

And then I got the date for my surgery and it falled on Halloween, which again, as a first year university students living in residence, I would have expected to do different things on Halloween than have a surgery. And size wise, I don't. I have the results from all my MRIs and all that and it doesn't. It doesn't give me a size that the best comparisons I've had and from measuring it on the MRIs is about the size of a marble. Okay, initially we were told the size of a pea, but I think that was a true underestimation, maybe kind of trying to reassure us. But it was the size of a marble, roughly.

Ben Seewald:

Okay, and did you get the pathology back? Did you know what you were dealing with?

Patrick Bélec:

Yes, so they had a few ideas of what it could have been. But during the surgery they do biopsies and the biopsies showed it was a .

Ben Seewald:

Okay.

Patrick Bélec:

So it's a tumour that typically affects the pituitary or the pituitary stock. It can also affect the hypothalamus and for me it had just sat on the stalk of the pituitary. I like to call the pituitary the scrotum of the brain because if you look at images of it it's kind of a little dangling bit at the bottom of the brain. And yeah, kevin was a cranial .

Ben Seewald:

So so, Kevin, so tell me a little bit about, so you named your tumour. Kevin was a . So, Kevin, tell me a little bit about, so you named your tumour, Kevin.

Patrick Bélec:

Yes.

Ben Seewald:

Tell me a bit about that.

Patrick Bélec:

So Kevin was baptized 15 minutes after I was diagnosed by my dad, actually and my parents had watched, a few days before, a show called my Strain Addiction, and the guy on that episode was addicted to puppets and his favorite puppet was Kevin. Kevin could buy groceries, kevin would talk to people, kevin would do most of the things that regularly you would do, and I'm like you know what that's. That's a good name for a little tumour that could be affecting me that much, and we would just refer to the tumour as Kevin. That's amazing. I've had a wide range of reaction to like why did you name your brain tumour? That's weird too. Oh my God, that's awesome.

Ben Seewald:

Okay, so you've got Kevin um and Halloween, you have your surgery, and so how did that impact kind of your your student life and kind of your path in education and training to be a registered nurse?

Patrick Bélec:

Yeah, so. So overall my schooling was, um, minimally affected, considering, uh, everything that happened with the tumour, including, uh and we'll get to that later the other surgeries and the radiation. But I had to take the second semester of my first year off, so I was able to finish the exams, the midterms of my first semester, and I did. I did the midterms of my of some of my classes within the same two weeks as the exams, because I had missed the midterms that were in October. So that whole month of the of October I was at my parents place right and so, but after two weeks after my first surgery I was back in school.

Patrick Bélec:

Wow, it was. It was either kind of a denial of what the tumour was supposed to stop me from doing I had stopped swimming but I'm like I'm not stopping school. I've worked too hard to get to university to just say I had one brain surgery. Let's push it back a full year.

Patrick Bélec:

No, I wanted to do as much as I could yes, with accommodations, and all my teachers or most of them were nurses, so they understood what I was going through, or they they they had an idea of how how it could impact me. And they, they were very flexible. They gave me like one-on-one exam time so I didn't have to be around other students. I could just do it after the exams or after the students had done their exams and I would just sit in the lab. The teacher would be there and I would just do my work. Sometimes I had my own little kind of space in one of our simulation lab where I could open the door if I was too hot to do my exam and kind of regulate my temperature. And my teachers were amazing, like I'm really thankful that they were flexible and understanding and I was able to finish that first semester.

Ben Seewald:

I think that's so incredible to be surrounded by people who really get it and understand what you're going through. And in the second part of our conversation we'll talk a little bit about kind of the support networks and advocacy as you kind of navigate these diagnoses. So I'm looking forward to diving into that a little bit more in the second part of our conversation. But was there anything that you really leaned into from your education and training during that time in your diagnosis?

Patrick Bélec:

Like me being in the hospital?

Ben Seewald:

Well, yeah, a little bit. I mean so kind of knowing the textbook material or being familiar, interested in the textbook material. How did that impact or complicate your patient experience?

Patrick Bélec:

well. It kind of contributed to some of the patient experience in a positive way. When the nurses would know I was a nursing student, they would explain a little more and they would take their time sometimes. And I also saw sometimes the kind of hesitancy behind the nurse and her actions because again, I could learn, but I can imagine I could have also criticized what they were doing and all of that, which is something nurses are aware of. So I saw both kind of hesitancy and the like oh, you're a nursing student, let me teach you about this and this and this, and that I was in my first semester, like I had, uh, not even two months in before I was diagnosed. So my knowledge was limited.

Patrick Bélec:

But there's a lot of things that I had learned.

Patrick Bélec:

That it was living firsthand like receiving a bed bath.

Patrick Bélec:

I was not expecting at 18 years old to be washed by someone else, but after surgery I was too weak to actually do it myself someone else, but after surgery I was too weak to actually do it myself. It kind of motivated me to get a little stronger. So I didn't have other people washing me, but it was the reality and it's a reality quite often of people in the hospital and I learned a lot of what to do and what not to do From the point of view of the patient receiving the care or being told certain things, just like I know to be like the first doctor that took her time, but not like the second doctor that was too strict to the point and shitty news and kind of. Lacking that bedside manner the balance of both is really important. Lacking that bedside manner the balance of both is really important. And I learned the kind of nurses I the kind of nurse I wanted to be and the kind of nurse I didn't want to be, because I had good nurses but I also had bad nurses.

Ben Seewald:

I think that's like any industry. Right Is that you're going to get the superstars and you're going to get the people who are kind of on the other end of the standard deviation bell curve, right?

Patrick Bélec:

Absolutely.

Ben Seewald:

So, of course, your experience as a patient must have influenced your bedside manner. Did it change the way you provide treatment to your patients?

Patrick Bélec:

Absolutely. I learned that taking a few minutes to actually listen to someone and like, if you can sit down, that's even better, because there's there's always a dynamic relationship, a power dynamic that favors the nurses or the healthcare professionals, a power dynamic that favors the nurses or the healthcare professionals. And by standing up, when the patient is either laying flat or sitting in bed, again there's a physical dynamic. Sitting down, you kind of help balance that dynamic a little bit and it can help the patient feel more comfortable. And I know the reality is in healthcare we're rushed, we have a list of things to do, we have emergencies to deal with, we have mandatory and additional tasks to do. We don't always have the time and I haven't always had the time, which kind of affects me a little more because I know how important it can be for patients. But again, it's a balancing act. Nursing is a balancing act, but I've noticed the kind of response I get from my patients when I actually take the time or when I call out the kind of white lies and we'll have those in everyday conversation oh hi, how are you doing? I'm good, you, I'm good.

Patrick Bélec:

People aren't always good and saying like I don't believe you, you don't seem good, especially as a nurse, when I've heard on report like that patient was waking up every hour for neuro checks and for vitals or for blood work or for medications. And the nurse says like, yeah, they've had a rough night. And then I go in and they say, oh, I'm doing good, they've had a rough night. And then I go in and they say, oh, I'm doing good. And you you don't see any kind of positive uh features on their face, calling it out and say you don't seem sure about that.

Patrick Bélec:

How are you like really feeling? And they're like I'm not doing that good, like you guys haven't let me sleep. You guys like keep waking me up, the food is disgusting, I can't even wash myself, this and this and that and all things I've lived like I've been waking up by the nurses, by the doctors, by the attending, by the residents, by the med students, and that's throughout the day when I'm trying to recover from not sleeping at night. And I've been waking up by alarms or by IV pumps or by code blue alarms. Ironically, the hospital is not the best place to recover. No, absolutely. It's an important place to recover, but not the best place to recover.

Ben Seewald:

I completely agree. I think that it's really good at the hospital scene, is really good at treating the symptoms and the acute phase, but definitely the recovery treating the symptoms and the acute phase, but definitely the recovery and there's I think there's a lot of improvement that could happen in that process. So can you quickly then just kind of lead us through a little bit as to what subsequent kind of surgeries or treatment also did you have?

Patrick Bélec:

also did you have? Yeah, so I remember doing my exams and having more migraines and having more like emotional ups and downs where I would just start crying and not crying out of sadness, I would just start crying for nothing and I remember being able to feel it kind of bubbling up and be like I need to either get away from people or go to my specific people and just like take some times and I was having like over Christmas we had family over and I was having more trouble with my vision and my in both my eyes, um, like again, red flags were showing up and for for a little while, especially during my exam times, I'm like, oh it's, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Maybe I pushed myself too much, returning to school two weeks after my first surgery, but no, I wouldn't dare say that out loud, right, um, and after new's, after family left, my parents were like, yeah, something's going on. They called my neurosurgeons. They said he's having those symptoms. They said, okay, come tomorrow We'll get an appointment with the neuro-ophthalmologist and we'll get an MRI.

Patrick Bélec:

And that was like January 3rd. So most things were still kind of closed or not to regular hours. So I remember the neuro ophthalmologist coming on a day off just for me, just for that appointment. And then I had my MRI and right after my MRI my neurosurgeons told me you have a cyst that developed in the spot where we did the surgery and either an infection or either the tumour's back. And in my head I'm like, oh, I hope it's an infection because I can just take antibiotics, which is not the reality when it comes to those kinds of infection. But again, I didn't know that as a not quite first year nursing student, and they said you need an emergency surgery tomorrow. So they moved cases because of me and it's kind of not always the best feelings of like, oh, other people's surgeries were canceled or moved because of me, but it's good that we're able to do that.

Ben Seewald:

Yeah.

Patrick Bélec:

And I had my second surgery. Then they said, okay, you need a third surgery, because the two first ones were they went through my nose to access the tumour. And then they said we need a third one where we actually do a typical craniotomy, where they take a piece of skull out and go in for a different access to the tumour because you can't just move the brain around to get to where you want to go. It's the brain doesn't work like that. It doesn't like being touched in ways that it shouldn't be. So I, they said, said okay, you're gonna have your surgery next week. And two days before the surgery they said your neurosurgeon has an emergency, uh, outside the country, so go back home and we'll call you. Um, we'll call you with a day for your third surgery.

Patrick Bélec:

And the recovery from the second surgery went so well, like I woke up feeling happy and I it wasn't the drugs or the medications they were giving me I felt genuinely happy and relaxed, more than I had felt in the two months before. Wow, and I was. I remember being on the phone and in the hospital after my second surgery, calling my, my friends in school and saying, hey, can you go back, buy my books for this and this new class for this term and, um, I just have brain surgery, but I'll, I'll be back. And they're like oh, are you sure? And I had a lot of like are you sure you should do that? Is it okay with your neurosurgeon? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just told like don't lift anything, be careful when you do X, y and Z. But I could go back to school. They're like take some rest, make sure that you don't push yourself. I'm like, yes, I will not push myself. You don't push yourself like, yes, I will not push myself. Did I push myself? Probably, but not pushing myself to a point where it wouldn't have been safe.

Patrick Bélec:

So I went back home waiting for that third surgery. I went back to school because I'm like, okay, this third surgery is going to be more invasive, I'm going to be, it's going to be a longer recovery, might as well, try to catch up on the schoolwork that I'll miss after that third surgery. So I went back to school and like, throughout that first year I had times where I just go back to my parents' place. They would come pick me up. My mom says she lived quite a few months with her phone in one hand and her car keys in the other, because if I called her and said like I need to leave, she would come pick me up and it's an hour drive. So it wasn't nothing. So go back to school. I have my third surgery 24 days after my second one.

Patrick Bélec:

So I had three surgeries within a three month timeframe and after the surgery they said the tumour actually grew between the second surgery, where they removed some of it, and a third surgery. And they said and we had that meeting with my neurosurgeons where the neurosurgeon the head neurosurgeon shook my hand and he I need to shout him out Dr Amin Kassam. He had the best bedside manner I have ever seen. He would walk into the room and he had a kind of aura, a vibe of cool, calm, collected, and it would spread to, like me, my parents and I remember him shaking my hand and then holding my hand in his left hand and shaking my mom's hand, my dad's hand, and I was just sitting there holding his hand and he says this is the most aggressive pituitary tumour I have seen in 14 years of specialty and I was like, oh, I'm special it doesn't sound.

Ben Seewald:

Sound like Kevin was messing around.

Patrick Bélec:

Yeah, no, he wasn't. Kevin needed to be annihilated and the way to do that was with radiation. And that's when he told me, like you need radiation to control it, and we can't wait. And I'm like, oh okay. And when he said radiation.

Patrick Bélec:

I kind of thought this is when I I leave school like I put my, my studies on hold for now, because the the treatments and I learned meaning the radio oncologist and the, the whole radiation team that it would be one treatment a day, day for five days, monday to Friday for six weeks, and my first five treatments were on one machine while they planned for the radiation for the other machine. And I started radiation two weeks after my third surgery. So again, very short span. Sometimes it takes a few months to plan the radiation but my neurosurgeon was like we cannot wait because it is unusually aggressive. But again, it's a benign tumour, and I say benign with quotation marks because I don't like the word benign. It kind of neglects the patient's experience of how bad it can be and with brain tumours it doesn't matter. With brain tumours the location and the size matters as much, if not more, than if it's quote quote benign or malignant. So if it's non-cancerous or cancerous, the size and the emplacement of the tumour has that much importance and for me it could have made me blind and there were some pretty serious side effects with the surgeries and everything. It could have affected the hypothalamus, affected my sleep-wake cycle, affected my appetite, to a point where I would never feel full Like there were some serious side effects with this benign brain tumour.

Patrick Bélec:

That was Kevin, and hearing that you need radiation. And hearing that you need radiation, okay, I need to stop school. I moved out of residence. I had my friends from residence kind of help me out and I had a floor meeting with the people I lived in residence with because I had grown quite fond of them, and I told them I need to leave, I need radiation. I told them I need to leave, I need radiation, and I was like I had half my face that was visibly swollen from the third surgery and it took people off Like they weren't expecting me to need that much and I wasn't expecting it either. I thought radiation was just for cancer or chemotherapy was just for cancer. No, that is not the reality. And that was probably the part where I'm like, okay, this tumour is affecting me more than I wanted to affect me and I've got absolutely no power over it to affect me and I've got absolutely no power over it. So let's try to make the radiation as interesting as possible.

Patrick Bélec:

And that was from like dedicating each treatment to someone, a friend or family and I still have my list somewhere of like which treatment I dedicated to who, just because, again, it's one way to stay connected. I took lots of pictures. I have a ton of pictures and because the radiation treatment for that first machine was five minutes and then after that I was done and the other machine, the 25 other treatments, were on the CyberKnife and the CyberKnife is such an amazing machine and throughout, like my surgeries and radiation, I was always curious. I wanted to learn what the equipment was, what, like I would watch them insert IVs and I would watch them do what they had to do, because I wanted to learn. I'm like, okay, what is this kind of grenade-looking thing that's hanging from my scalp? It's like, oh, it's a Jackson Pratt, it's a drain that's kind of evacuating blood from between your skull and your skin. Okay, cool, I was trying to learn at the same time and those learning experiences were like brought me more to my current nursing practice than school did.

Patrick Bélec:

Like yes, I learned a lot in school, but the impact that being a patient and being in school had being a patient had way more of an impact on my current practice and I think, like happening in first year kind of structured my learning for the next few years as a nursing student and, yeah, I got to meet some amazing people. I had started, I had asked people to. I had started I had asked people to sign a t-shirt with Ottawa on it that I had bought at the hotel store from my very first surgery. So I kept gathering signatures on that t-shirt of healthcare professionals and that's from the nurse, psw, the doctors, neurosurgeon, the people that came to bring me my lunch tree, that recognized me on my third surgery, and I remember one specifically saying what are you doing back here? I'm like well, the tumour came back and they got teary. It affected them to see me back in the hospital, hospital, so so those kinds of people had an impact on me and, directly or indirectly, affected the way I'm a nurse today.

Ben Seewald:

Well, I think that's actually a really great point to to stop part one of this conversation as we kind of lead ourselves into part two of the conversation of our Beyond Brain Tumours podcast. Join us into part two of the conversation of our Beyond Brain Tumours podcast. Join us for part two of our conversation Beyond Brain Tumours with Patrick Bélec as we discuss the role of solid support systems and networks, the power of friends and family, and Patrick's thoughts on patient advocacy and self-advocacy. That's all to come in the next episode of Beyond Brain Tumours podcast.