Her sister died of a brain tumor. Now she had similar symptoms.

Known diagnosis, we gradually stopped removing more tumor. The more tumors you remove, the longer the average survival, no matter how lean. But the quest for surgical perfection sometimes comes at a cost. In the brain, where essential human functions are clustered in mere millimeters of tissue, removing more tumors and eventually damaging healthy tissue risks losing strength, speech, vision, memory, etc. In glioblastoma, tumor cells that have moved a few centimeters away from the tumor mass, beyond the reach of any tweezers, almost guarantee cancer recurrence. Surgical perfection is imperfect. She wanted to keep her strength.