Today is Glioblastoma Awareness Day, a day to help those affected by this devastating disease and remember lives lost to Glioblastoma (GMB), lives like Senator John McCain, and Mike Traphagen.
Michael died from brain cancer in October 2020. His wife Shannon Traphagen continues to be an advocate and storyteller for those walking through brain cancer, grief and loss. Shannon is an author and hosts Game on GLIO Podcast.
Shannon says, “Brain cancer is one of those few diseases people don’t talk about, nobody really does understand it even with high profile cases like Senator John McCain, Bo Biden the President’s son. People forget that this disease is extremely relevant, and it is very wide-spread.” Her husband was diagnosed at the age of 44. She says “I can’t tell you the number of individual I’ve met under the age of 50 that have been diagnosed with Glioblastoma and currently there is no cure for this disease and it usually takes people fairly rapidly but we are starting to see trends and we are starting to see clinical trials and there are so many doctors fighting to give longevity to individuals and that’s part of the reason I do what I do.” One of the trials is a vaccine for newly diagnosed patients with Glioblastoma and it is out of Roswell and Shannon says it is showing great progress and it is in phase 2B clinical trials right now and she mentions some of the other trials taking place around the country.
She has a podcast called Game on GLIO. She says, “When her husband was diagnosed their motto was ‘game on’. We were going to take this head on so their motto was game on – bring it on, we are going to take this head on. She says when she started the podcast, she started it to bring his legacy into the future, not only to share our story, but she wanted to give a hub to people across the globe, to have a place to listen to the information and digest the information, because when you are immersed in this as the caregiver, whether you are the family member or the spouse, son or the daughter, you don’t have time to go to clinicaltrials.gov all the time and decipher and look through and pick out to see what is going to be the best fit or what can work and what might not and it is too much information. And for the average individual you don’t know what this stuff means so when you are just able to listen to a podcast, an episode, hear doctors talking, hear form other patients having success with what they are doing. She says something clicks and there is a synergy there. It’s a way for people to obtain the information in a digestible way and then they can go look the information up on our website or go directly to that guests website and social media to get the information they need and it just makes things easier but it also brings us all together as a brain cancer community.”
