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Show Good attitude, God and family’ helped man beat brain tumor — By JaNAE FRANCIS Standard-Examiner staff jfrancis@standard.net ERIN HOOLEVekancerd: Examiner At his home in Farmington, Todd Baker (top) shows a mask he wore during treatment for a brain tumor. The electrical contractor now is , able to do some work from home. ARMINGTON — Todd Baker knows he has lived through a miracle. “Good luck’s got to come my way,” he said he’s come to believe. “It’s got to.” Baker, 43, is believed to be the oldest person ever to be diagnosed with an atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor. He considers himself the luckiest person alive. The right side of his body stopped working in August 2009 and he soon learned that he had an aggressive, grade-four brain tumor the size of a baseball. Doctors at McKay-Dee Hospital’s Cancer Center immediately removed it, but in 30 days it had grown back to the same size. An aggressive surgery that left some of his left leg and foot paralyzed and equally aggressive doses of chemotherapy and radiation still left him with small tumors on his brain three months later. At that point an oncologist in Salt Lake City told Baker there was nothing more he could do for him. “He said ‘T think it’s untreatable.’ Basically, ‘Go home and die.’ Boy, what a bad i day,” Baker said. “We wanted to go get drunk when we heard that.” 8 But Baker’s mother, Connie Baker, wasn’t : going to stand for it. : “We got to our exit on the freeway and she just kept going,” Baker said. Connie Baker took her son to a radiologist at McKay-Dee Hospital that same day. He gave Baker hope and a treatment plan to’ address the 18 tumors he saw on his brain that grew together like grapes. The treatments have left Baker feeling sicker than he’s ever been in his life and he lost his hair twice. “That’s one thing you don’t realize until you are in the middle of it — how tough you are,” Baker said. But the treatments seem to have worked. In mid October, Baker’s radiologist found no ° signs of the cancer after seven months of the aggressive treatments. “That was a happy day when they took that see CANCER | Page 5A |
