PORT ANGELES — As the pastor leads the church in prayer, a woman in the back row bows her head, covered with a bandana to hide her surgical scars, and poses a query to God, “Why me?”
It’s a question that has plagued Karen Sproed, a single mother of three, ever since she was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in August 2008.
But at the Upper Room Church that Saturday evening in October, the 40-year-old Port Angeles woman believes she was given an answer.
“God says it’s not about you,” she said, struggling to enunciate. “Everybody has a different walk.”
That moment of clarity, and the peace that it brought her, is what Sproed wants to spread to others and to take with her every day for the rest of her life. As she knows, she may not have many days left.
Tumor remains
After six dangerous surgeries to remove a tennis-ball sized tumor from underneath her brain stem and rebuild a portion of her spine — and countless trips to hospitals in Seattle and California — doctors told her two months ago the words she hoped and prayed she would never hear.
The chordoma tumor cannot be destroyed. It will take her life.
The news hit her like a ton of bricks.
“I just want to get well,” she said, fighting back the tears. “I don’t want to be sick.
“I feel like I’m in a dream. I just want to be OK.”
Nerve damage caused by the tumor has left her with a half-paralyzed tongue and unable to swallow.
Sproed, who uses a feeding tube, has trouble speaking and sometimes has to rely on a friend to repeat her words for others.
But she said she doesn’t want that to prevent others from knowing her story, which she hopes will teach people to appreciate everything life has to offer.
Everything a loan, a gift
“We don’t own nothing,” Sproed said. “Everything is a loan. Everything is a gift.”
Sproed keeps two journals; she wants to turn one into a book.
It tells of her battle with the tumor, including the surgeries and the inspirations and doubts with her faith that it has caused.
If Sproed wants to inspire others, her pastor, Mike Jones, said that is something she has already accomplished.
“I keep thinking I’m going to encourage her and find my own heart encouraged by her faith,” he said.
The other journal contains messages for her children: Khya, 6, Bubba, 18, and Anthony, 20.
Khya, never far from her mother’s side and never lacking energy, said she knows what will happen if the tumor takes her mother’s life.
“She’ll be in my heart, and I’ll be in her heart,” she said with a smile, her youthful innocence apparently untarnished. “She’ll be an angel.”
Her daughter’s words bring a smile to Sproed’s face. She said the one thing she wants to live for is to see Khya grow up.
“I want to be a mom,” she said. “I want to take her to her prom.”
Hopes for miracle
While accepting her fate, Sproed, always putting her illness in the context of her faith, said she is also hoping for a miracle.
And miracles, she said, she hasn’t lacked.
After her tumor erupted in late August and covered her brain with blood, Sproed said she is surprised to be alive.
“He has a plan,” she said, pointing to the ceiling.
Her doctor, Robin Jones of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, agreed she is lucky to have survived.
“It was a very serious event,” he said.
But in regard to her tumor, Robin Jones said there is little medical science can do.
“Once surgery is not an option, there is no way of curing the disease,” he said.
Chemotherapy failed to stop its growth, and Sproed is left with taking imatinib, a drug not approved by the Federal Drug Administration, in hopes of slowing its expansion.
Robin Jones said the drug has shown to have success in slowing growth of tumors in other patients. This type of tumor affects about 0.1 per 100,000 people.
It hasn’t been approved by the FDA because, due to the rarity of the tumor, there aren’t enough patients to test it on.
The slow-growing malignant bone cancer, which always appears in the skull base or spine, occurs in about one new case per million people per year, said the Chordoma Foundation on its website, www.chordomafoundation.org/.
Time left
In terms of how much time Sproed has left, the doctor said that’s a question that is hard to answer. Five years, he said, would be a reasonable estimate.
“We’ll try to do the best we can,” Robin Jones said.
“She is such a wonderful person,” he added. “She deserves all the help she can get.”
Sproed is accepting donations to help pay for her medical expenses and frequent trips to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Donations can be made at Strait-View Credit Union, 220 S. Lincoln St., Port Angeles.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
