MONTREAL - Nobody is suggesting that Gary Carter will do for glioblastoma multiforme what fellow ballplayer Lou Gehrig did for ALS, but those who have dealt with the little-known brain cancer that claimed the Hall of Fame Expo, are well aware of how the fast-spreading ailment is not one that many would like to catch.
But fate tossed that medical knuckleball to David McLeod in 2009, who was one of 1,500 to 2,000 afflicted with the killer disease every year in Canada.
Sufferers of the condition are usually aged between 55 and 65 and their only hope for prolonged life lies in intensive treatment to complex and aggressive-spreading disease.
McLeod's first symptoms started when he suffered optical sensitivity to light.
"For the first time in my life, I couldn't watch a Canadiens hockey game because of the white of the ice. I was suddenly getting migraines and hearing whooshing sounds in my head. So I knew something was going on," said McLeod.
His medics learned quickly what was going on. .
"At some point, probably within the last four to six months, a single cell underwent a genetic mutation and the cell growth became uncontrolled so it began dividing and dividing and dividing," explains Kevin Petrecca, a Montreal brain surgeon.
He has seen the devastation that the cell division can cause.
"It's a really degenerative destructive process," said Petrecca.
The disease is not inclined to spread to the rest of the body, preferring instead to rave the cranial grey matter.
"Instead of metastasizing to other parts of the body it spreads through the brain," he said.
The average victim only makes it to three years, although some occasionally get to four or five years before being killed by the brain cancer.
McLeod in his fight, knows just how relentless the cancer can be.
"I know just how serious these types of cancer, glyomablastomas, are," he said. "They are just so aggressive, they don't quit."
