In 2009, a brain tumor was discovered in 35-year-old Sanne Olde Olthof from Frederiksoord. Three years later would be her last MRI scan. “Goodbye, we won’t see you again,” they said at the hospital about the “benign” tumor in her head. But nothing turned out to be less true. In 2019 fate struck: the tumor turned out to be malignant.
First, Olde Olthof would not be older than 65 years. With several years ahead of her, she resigned herself to it. “But on the control MRI scan they saw that my tumor was so smeared by my brain, which gave me an expiration date of around ten years,” she says in the Radio Drenthe program cassata.
Three of those ten years have now passed. “I’m not saying now: I won’t be there in ten years. Nobody gives me a date, I ultimately decide that myself.”
Carpe diem, in other words: seize the day. That has become the motto of Olde Olthof in the years to come. One of the things she has already done is to write a book about what she experienced. Hi I’m Sanne and I have a brain tumor, is called. “It is not only my own story, but also that of others,” she speaks on behalf of other patients who were diagnosed with a brain tumor (too late). “From the people who were not believed and would see things that were just right. Something has to change in the medical world to detect brain tumors faster. It is still one of the deadliest cancers out there.”
The complaints arose at Olde Olthof in 2008. She suffered from a splitting headache. Her doctor did not intervene. It was in her ears, she was told. She was referred to a substitute general practitioner. After she was ‘finished’ according to the doctors in 2012, she went crazy again in a car ride in 2019 because of the flashes of light that completely obstructed her vision. “But I didn’t think about that tumor for a second. Not for a second.”
A new result made the doomsday scenario come true. “You have a malignant brain tumor and it has grown to such an extent that we are sending you to the UMCG. You are going back into the mill,” was the conclusion. “That was a slap in the face. I never thought about that tumor again. ‘I’ll do that for my work'”, she thought about the outcome.
Radiation treatments and chemotherapy followed. She didn’t need an IV. “I feel like I’ve taken the easy way, but sometimes I’m really sick. I’ve been without chemo for a year now, but I still suffer from complaints every day.” She has difficulty speaking, finding words and she finds her memory a ‘drama’. Fatigue also sets in more and more. “In retrospect, I think: this has been much too heavy,” she says of the treatment.
Olde Olthof does not blame herself for not having sounded the alarm sooner after the ‘reassuring’ announcement in 2012. “It sometimes comes up. If only I then … then it might all have been different now.”
Nevertheless, the Drenthe keeps the courage. She got a tattoo with the text We always have today, to indicate ‘that we all still have today’. “Whatever we whine and complain about, today we have and that day we have to take. Be happy and do the things you want to do.”
The book Hi, my name is Sanne and I have a brain tumor will be presented in the last week of January. But on Monday she first celebrates her 36th birthday. “It will be a day to celebrate. Another year added.”