Katie Corun: Trying To See Beyond A Diagnosis

At the start of her third semester of nursing school in September 2011, Katie Corun sat in Professor Zimmerman's neurology lecture in Edgewood Hall.

"I'm having trouble seeing the board," she told her classmate, Tracy.

"Don't worry," Tracy said. "Professor Zimmerman is going to move in a minute."

But it wasn't the professor blocking her view.

"I blinked a few times and it was still there," she recalls. "I kind of thought it was from me reading so much in that first week back at school."

She knew she was facing new challenges with her studies beginning at Harford Community College just two months after buying a home with her new husband, Ron. 

But those life changes would pale in comparison to the real problem at hand.

A nap didn't help. 

So, Katie visited an eye doctor before eventually being admitted to a Baltimore hospital. 

On Sept. 11, 2011, doctors found a mass.

About two weeks later, a nine-hour procedure enabled doctors to get a biopsy. A month later, a diagnosis: an optic pathway glioma. 

"Rare and fatal," Kathy Robinette-Stoneberg, Katie's mom, recalls hearing. "Adults don't normally get them."

The obstruction Katie had experienced was in her head, and with it came a 5-to-10-year life expectancy.

"I went home and wrote my funeral plans out, as far as what I wanted to have done, things I wanted to go to people," Katie said. "When someone says to you, 'There's really not much we can do for you,' what else is there for you to do? I didn't think much at that time about second opinions."

Then, out of the blue in the days following the diagnosis, a neighbor stopped by and suggested to Kathy that she take Katie to Duke University's Preston Robert Tisch Brain Cancer Center.

Figuring she had nothing to lose, Kathy picked up a phone and dialed Dr. Henry Friedman at Duke on a Monday afternoon.

That night, she received a call from the 919 area code. It was Dr. Friedman.

They talked for an hour or so, and Katie's information was sent to Duke.

By Nov. 9, 2011, Katie, Ron and Kathy were Duke-bound, looking for answers. And, hope.

Visit Fallston Patch on Thursday for Part II of this story. Sign up for Fallston Patch's newsletter to make sure you don't miss it!

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Take part in a fundraiser to benefit Duke's Preston Robert Tisch Brain Cancer Center, on behalf of Katie Corun, from 2-6 p.m. this Saturday at Half Pints in Bel Air.