Joe Blanda refuses to be a statistic.
When Joe was diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer called glioblastoma at age 17 in October 2012, he heard the median survival is measured in months rather than years.
For children with glioblastoma, the five-year survival rate is a grim 25 percent, according to the American Brain Tumor Association.
But Joe, now 18, has battled through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments while still attending classes at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson and playing goalie last fall on the school’s soccer team.
The Boston Township resident will graduate this spring, with plans to attend John Carroll University in the fall.
Along with receiving treatments at the Cleveland Clinic and Summa Health System, Joe has traveled to leading cancer centers in the country for evaluations and medical care.
“Bad things happen to a lot of people,” said his mother, Dr. Michelle Blanda, an emergency medicine physician and former longtime head of emergency services at Summa Health System. “You’ve got to be like, ‘I can be a survivor.’ You’ve got to believe that. Statistics are for a population. Any individual can beat a statistic.”
“You are your own statistic,” Joe added.
Launching foundation
Now Joe wants to help others attempt to beat the odds by funding research through a new foundation he encouraged his parents to launch.
Blast Glioblastoma is a nonprofit group that’s raising money to fund promising brain tumor research projects
“Early on, Joe said, ‘We should give something back. We should try to raise money to further the efforts toward finding a cure,’ ” said his father, Dr. Joe Blanda, an orthopedic surgeon in Akron. “Brain cancer research is grossly underfunded. The money’s not there. Joe felt like he’d like to give something back.”
The Blandas saw firsthand the need to boost brain tumor research funding. Joe was supposed to participate in a clinical trial that ended up being canceled because of lack of funding.
“It just reinforced the need to do this,” said Dr. Joe Blanda, who now spends much of his time researching brain tumor treatments.
Blast Glioblastoma is kicking off its major fundraising efforts with a sold-out dinner and auction Saturday at Fairlawn Country Club. More than 400 people are expected to attend.
Three platinum sponsors — the Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center, the Akron Center for Neuro and Spine and Summa Academic and Community Emergency Specialists — each have donated $25,000.
Blast Glioblastoma also is holding a 5K run and wellness expo with registration starting at 8 a.m. Sunday on the Western Reserve Academy campus.
The goal is to raise enough money through these and other events to fund research projects, which will be selected and approved by medical advisory team made up of leading neuro-oncology physicians from across the country.
“We want to help everyone else now,” Joe said.
Life-altering diagnosis
What started as a precautionary trip to the emergency room after a collision during a soccer game ended in Joe’s life-altering diagnosis.
Joe, then 17, blacked out during a big game after crashing into another player while attempting to head a ball.
His mother immediately recognized the signs of concussion and wanted him to get a CT scan the next day to be safe.
During his exam at Summa St. Thomas Hospital, a concerned colleague told her she needed to see the results right away.
“Even from afar, I could look at the CT scan and see something was grossly wrong,” she said.
Suddenly, a concussion was the least of their worries.
The brain cancer diagnosis was shocking, particularly since the active teen didn’t have any obvious symptoms, aside from occasional headaches.
“Most children are healthy,” his mother said. “We took that for granted.”
Two days later, he underwent surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, where surgeons told him they were able to remove the entire tumor.
“I was really happy with that,” he said. “To me, that was like the problem was out of me. It’s gone.”
But test results showed his tumor was an aggressive form of cancer that is difficult to treat.
Glioblastoma tumors have microscopic cancer cells that spread throughout the brain tissue, explained Dr. Michael Vogelbaum, associate director of the Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center at the Cleveland Clinic and member of the medical advisory team of Blast Glioblastoma.
Complicating treatment, few chemotherapy agents are able to cross the “blood-brain barrier,” a natural substance to protect the brain, Vogelbaum said.
A younger age at diagnosis, normal neurological function and complete removal of the detectable tumor — all factors in Joe’s favor — can lead to a better outcome.
“There is not a known cure for glioblastoma so the treatments are designed to control it as long as possible and promote a good quality of life for as long as possible,” he said.
Vogelbaum said community support is crucial to fund research projects for glioblastoma, which doesn’t have any known environmental or genetic causes.
“It’s not often that patients and their families will go to the lengths the Blandas have to organize a foundation that will support brain tumor research,” he said.
For more information about Blast Glioblastoma and its fundraising events, visit www.blastgbm.com or the Blast GBM page on Facebook.
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or cpowell@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Powell on Twitter at twitter.com/CherylPowellABJ.