May 9, 2013
Contact: Carmelle Malkovich
602-406-3319
Please consider as a Mother’s Day story. May is also Brain Tumor Awareness Month.
Young Valley Mom Stuns Doctors by Beating Deadliest Brain Cancer
Will Celebrate First Mother’s Day Sunday
Given just months to live in 2006, a 32-year-old Arizona woman,
treated at St. Joseph’s Barrow Neurological Institute, has
amazingly beat two brain tumors, outlived her projected life
expectancy, and recently became a mother – all things no one
ever thought imaginable. She will celebrate her first Mother’s
Day this Sunday. May is also National Brain Tumor Awareness
Month.
When diagnosed with a grade 4 Glioblastoma brain tumor, the deadliest of brain cancers, in 2006,
Heather Knies was facing a death sentence. Most people with her type of tumor – the same type of
brain tumor Senator Edward Kennedy died from – don’t live past 14 months. Knies not only beat
her cancer but she has gotten married and recently became a mom to her daughter Zoe, who is
10-months-old. Knies’ incredible outcome has shocked the medical community.
“It is very rare for a patient to survive as long as Heather has with this type of brain tumor. I am
very, very surprised and elated that Heather has made such a remarkable recovery,” says her
surgeon Robert Spetzler, MD, director of Barrow Neurological Institute and who is considered one
of the world’s top brain surgeons. “She has no neurological deficits and her MRI scan
demonstrates no evidence of any residual tumor.”
Knies was originally treated for a lower grade brain tumor in 2005 at age 24. Even with treatment,
her brain tumor was one that usually returns and transforms into a more aggressive type of tumor.
One year later, her brain cancer returned, and this time, it was the deadliest of brain tumors – a
grade 4 Glioblastoma. Knies was facing a death sentence.
She underwent a very aggressive surgery by Dr. Spetzler at Barrow to remove as much of the
tumor as possible. She then underwent radiation followed by three years of chemotherapy to treat
the remainder of the tumor. Barrow is one of the world’s top brain tumor treatment centers.
Nearly seven years later, Knies cancer has miraculously not returned. She believes that the
advanced medical treatment she received along with her unbelievable positivity is what made her
overcome her brain tumor. Her 10-month-old daughter is also a miracle since chemotherapy can
lead to infertility.
“I knew all along I would beat this cancer,” says Knies. “When a doctor tells you that you only have
a few months to live, most people believe it. I never did and I think that’s partly why I’m alive today.
I knew I was getting the best medical care and I was going to be defiant and survive.”
 Barrow 