Still Can’t Believe It, but I Survived

Still Can’t Believe It, but I Survived

Nicholas

Hi my name is Nicholas Barrett, I am a 28 year old brain tumor survivor. It all started back in February of last year, I was finishing up Grad school at Columbia. And I had gone away on a vacation with my girlfriend to Antigua. And I started to notice I began to have these dizzy spells, originally I thought it was simply happening due to the heat. And so I went on my merry way with life, these dizzy spells were not consistent & had no real triggers. But once I moved out to FL and I had to drive all the time I noticed these spells a bit more & they became frequent. So I decided to get them checked out, and my neurologist felt they were seizures. So we ran some test, first we did an EEG and that came back perfectly fine. Then we did an MRI & that was when I found out I had a glioma (which was the size of a baseball) It all was just a shock to me, because when the radiologist asked if I was in any sort of pain, I explained to him I was not. So I had to check myself into the hospital for further observation & ended up having a craniotomy in September at the University Of Miami. It is still a struggle at times, mainly just short term memory problems & getting off the AED’s now has given me a few withdrawal symptoms at times. But I am making progress & I am truly grateful to be able to tell this entire ordeal.

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