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READ MOREPublished on May 12, 2020 in Share Your Story
I would vomit, skip school, and work just so I could sleep. Doctors couldn’t give me any answers as to why.
Then one day in March 2018, just like, that I was having uncontrollable seizures in my apartment. My brain was swelling. Someone finally found me. I first ended up at UF health where they wanted to schedule my surgery a week out. I was unconscious for about 3 or 4 days. I obviously had epilepsy at this point which I never had before.
My Aunt Vicki took my medical records to Mayo Clinic where a world renown Doctor Q took the case and said we had to do surgery right away. The tumor was the size of a softball. I did two awake craniotomies. The first one was simple, I had to raise my right hand and wiggle my right foot. When I was losing my speech or motor skills, that’s when Dr. Q would stop. And when I felt a little pressure, I would just tell the anesthesiologist and he would just do his thing. Plus I had handsome fella holding my hand both times.
The second time, I had a little bell on my foot and I would ring it same thing as before. I had to do radiation, where my aunt Vicki’s husband Randy is the radiology tech he made feel comfortable. It wasn’t easy. With radiation you, had to wear a mask and it held you down on a table. Just thinking about it is making me claustrophobic all over again.
I lost my hair. All of it. And I refused to cut it, so it just kept falling out. Then, I went on Temodar. I vomited a lot. I got so sick. I felt like the cancer wasn’t going to kill me, this was! My tumor shrunk and shrunk, until it disappeared. I had about a million MRI’s between the beginning of April 2018 and February 2020. I still get nauseas, sometimes I vomit, I still get tired and I still get migraines but now at least I know why. I always thought something was wrong with me. At least they’re manageable.
Opinions expressed within this story belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of the National Brain Tumor Society.
