I was a healthy 32-year-old wife and a mom of two young children, ages 5 and 3. I started to have headaches daily and took ibuprofen to ease the pain. I didn’t think much of it; I called them ‘mom headaches’ and figured every busy mom experienced them. I dealt with these headaches for about six months and thought nothing of it.
I was primarily a stay-at-home mom raising my kids, but I did have a part-time job working as an esthetician in a spa on Sundays for a few hours. One Sunday morning, as I was setting up my ‘backbar’ — where I had all my products set out for use — I noticed that when I closed my right eye, my left eye became very blurry, and I couldn’t read any of the labels. This was concerning to me as I do not wear glasses or have contacts.
Due to my lack of vision, I made an appointment to have my eyes checked. Fast forward to my appointment with an ophthalmologist, who did a thorough exam and only noticed a slight astigmatism. After this appointment, I just figured my eyes were changing due to age?!
Headaches on Vacation
Our family was planning a trip to Disneyland in the spring of 2015, and we were all excited and looking forward to a little vacation. Our family flew out to Southern California. There, my headaches continued, but I just continued to take ibuprofen, and I would drink Diet Coke, thinking maybe the caffeine would help.
The day arrived for us to go to Disneyland, and my headaches continued and got much worse during the day. I was not much fun to be around; I was in a lot of pain, but I was trying to push through because our kids were excited and happy, and the tickets were very expensive!
We made it through the day, but on the way home, my head was throbbing. I just figured I was exhausted from traveling, walking around Disneyland, and going on rides. The next day, my husband and I decided we needed a ‘chill’ day, and we would just stick around the hotel and go to the pool. That is exactly what we did. I was sitting beside the pool holding my son — he was resting on my chest — when I started to feel this ‘melting’ feeling come down the left side of my face and into my right arm.
Melting is exactly what it felt like. My face became droopy, and I lost control of my tongue and mouth. I also lost feeling completely in my right arm. I turned to my husband and said ‘Something is happening to me, I can’t feel the left side of my face or my right arm.”
My speech was extremely slurred; I actually started laughing before the tears because I was not myself. My husband attended to me quickly, taking my son off my chest and evaluating me. After about 2-3 minutes or so, I started to get the feeling back into my face and slowly back into my arm.
I was exhausted after this incident and just wanted to rest. We decided to just go back to our hotel room, I got changed, and went right into bed and slept until the next morning. In the morning, my husband said he was very concerned and wanted me to get checked out because whatever happened really freaked him out, and he wanted to make sure I was OK!
I was feeling fine at this point and was telling him that I didn’t need to get checked out. I said, “I’m on vacation! I don’t want to waste time going to the hospital!” He insisted that I get checked out because whatever had happened the day before was not normal. I was very hesitant but agreed to get checked out.
Trip to the Hospital on Vacation
Our kids were not feeling well during this time while on vacation. My son had a croupy cough, and my daughter was complaining of ear aches, so my husband decided to drop me off at the ER of the local hospital and then take our kids to the urgent care down the street to get checked out. My husband dropped me off, and I walked into the ER very nonchalantly to the triage nurse. I started explaining how I had some sort of episode yesterday and lost feeling in the left side of my face and my right arm, as I was telling her this, her eyes got a little bigger, and she tilted her head a bit.
She told me these were stroke symptoms, and I needed to have an MRI done. I was taken back into a room pretty quickly, and within a short time, I was heading back to have an MRI. I seriously thought all of this was silly and a waste of time! I was just a normal/healthy 32-year-old woman!
After the MRI, I was waiting back in the room for the results. A team of doctors entered the room and told me, “You have a very large meningioma and it needs to be removed tomorrow morning.” We are going to schedule your surgery. They showed me my scan and lo and behold… there was a very large mass in the left frontal lobe of my brain! I was in disbelief.
The doctors told me a nurse will be in shortly to get me admitted. During this time, I called my husband, who was in the pharmacy drive-thru at Walgreens to pick up our kids’ prescriptions. He asked me how things are going and I told him I would rather tell him in person when he gets back to the hospital, but like anyone woul,d he wanted to know right away. I told him, “I have a large brain tumor and the doctors told me I need it removed soon!”
He, of course, couldn’t believe what I was saying. My husband came right to the hospital with the kids as I was being admitted. I was put on some meds to stop my brain from swelling. What I had encountered the day before at the pool was a partial onset seizure (the melting of my face/drooping, and loss of feeling in my arm).
While sitting in the hospital, the doctors were telling me the course of action… having the tumor removed, going to a rehab facility after the removal to get back to doing normal everyday things. Our family was still on vacation! No family, no help around at all! We thought that this wasn’t going to work!
Getting a Second Opinion
We decided to return to Colorado to have brain surgery. We need to be home, we need to have help! My husband has a cousin who is a brain surgeon in Omaha, NE. We quickly reached out for his recommendations, and he actually knew a very skilled surgeon in the Denver area who was able to get us in for a consultation for surgery very quickly. THANK GOODNESS!
After returning to Colorado, we met with the surgeon in Denver and decided on a day for surgery. I chose April 22nd… Earth Day! Nothing bad can happen on Earth Day… right?! I arrived for surgery ready to get this all over and done with. Surgery went well, and the surgeon was able to remove pretty much all of the meningioma. I think the total time in surgery was around 5-6 hrs or so.
I ended up having a 7cmx4cm meningioma in my left frontal lobe, grade 2 at the age of 32.
My husband tells me that after surgery, I was awake/alert and talking, but then I slowly started declining with my speech. I started not being able to speak at all that someone could actually understand what I was saying. I could not express my needs or wants to the nurses or doctors. It was very hard. I cried… A LOT! My head was bandaged, and I had a skull cap on for a few days. Once the skull cap came off, my hair looked like Medusa!
Recovery After Surgery
One of the nurses had put my hair into braids before the surgery, so I didn’t need to have any part of my hair shaved. I had a very kind nurse in the ICU who was willing to patiently take the braids out and brush my hair… I am so thankful for her. I still wanted to look presentable and human! In the hospital, I started some speech therapy, which was terribly difficult for me. I did not have the same abilities to make connections from my brain to the muscles in my mouth; it was extremely frustrating.
I knew that I knew how to do these things, but I could not actually make it happen anymore. An example of this was blowing a feather across a clipboard. I could NOT do it! I couldn’t circle my lips to blow out air. I literally had no idea how.
I was released from the hospital after two weeks. I went back home, where I could not be alone. I had to have my husband or family around all the time as I was still at risk of having seizures, and I did have seizures! They all presented just like the first partial onset seizure. Numbness on the left side of my face and numbness in my right arm.
I would work with a speech therapist for the next 10 months until I was back to “normal.” I would have 2-3 appointments weekly to learn how to speak again. I was also dedicated to doing ‘brain games’ on the computer at home to sharpen my brain and cognitive abilities.
Here I am, 10 years later. I still have MRI scans every 3 years or so to make sure there is no recurrence.
