Johanna's tumor is a grade IV glioma, in progression from a mixed grade 2 oligodendroglioma/plemorphic xanthoastrocytoma. Say that three times fast. I dare you.

How many other glioma tumor patients are out there? Well, each year only 17,000 are diagnosed (which is actually a fairly small number) but the average age of diagnosis is 55. So, Johanna is special.

How did Johanna know she had a brain tumor? Back in 1997, she was seeing black spots on her way to biology class. This soon turned into severe headaches and vomiting. So basically it was like most other people's Sunday mornings in college, but without all the beer and shame.

The second time around things were weirder. Johanna felt as though she had two right arms (and a left arm). This "third arm" would touch her face and play with her hair. Occasionally, a black shadow would move across the right side of her face. After this experience, Johanna confirmed the fact that she did not need (or want) to do any hallucinogenic drugs.

Johanna was lucky that her tumor was in an operable location (OK, is there an inoperable location? I mean, this thing was in the middle of her freaking skull for crying out loud!) and that she had a great team of doctors at Mayo. She had the same neurosurgeon in 1997 and 2009 and both surgeries went well.

Johanna completed 10 rounds of chemotherapy treatments to keep her tumor at bay, but she wants to do more to help the situation. She is reading several books about how diet can help her prognosis. Two of her books were authored by grade IV tumor survivors.

What kind of chemo did Johanna take, you ask? Temozolomide, which has been found to be more successful in treating brain tumors than previous options. So she's got that going for her. Which is nice.

Johanna's life the week of chemo: Sleep, go to work, sleep, take meds, sleep. Repeat. No, she didn't skip anything. She is thankful to be done with this chapter in her life.