I have what?!

For years growing up, I had horrible headaches. Shut the door, blackout all the windows, leave me alone headaches. But every time i would bring it up to a new doctor, they would push it off and tell me that I am a young girl going through puberty, its just my cycle. March of 2015 I finally found a doctor that would listen to me. I had horrible headaches, debilitating ones at that but as i had aged they had gotten worse and sometimes i would have facial numbness before getting one. Finally this doctor listened to what I had to say instead of trying to push medicine down my throat. March 14th, i turned 25 and had a MRI that day. He called me 6 hours after my MRI and told me that i needed to call him back when I was out of work, to call his personal cell phone because it would be late by the time i had gotten out of work. I called him with my family all around, wondering what he was going to say. “Rachel, you have a brain tumor”- words I will never forget. It was sitting on the Optic nerve in my right eye and winding down to and around my brain stem.

The days after that were a blur, he wasn’t sure what type of tumor it was and wouldn’t be able to tell me until they took it out. I had my surgery scheduled for April 16th, but was later postponed due to that fact that i was 8 weeks pregnant and the surgeon didn’t want to do anything until after I had the baby. March of 2016 I had the surgery, scared as ever because I had a newborn at home that needed me. They biopsied it, turns out it was a Dermoid and completely benign. Since then, I do have extremely bad headaches and even have occasional seizures. Thankful that even though I still do have extremely bad headaches, I am healthy and have a beautiful baby boy.

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Opinions expressed within this story belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of the National Brain Tumor Society.