Brain Tumor Backstory

Some of you may have seen me and my mom’s post on Instagram and Facebook about my brain tumor and me undergoing surgery to remove it, and you may have been curious because we haven’t been speaking publically about what we’ve recently found out. And I’ve been thinking about whether or not I wanted to share my story, but I feel that God has a purpose for me and my purpose is to share my story to bring anyone reading this closer to him, spread awareness and help someone who could be going through the same thing I’m going through. I’ll try and “walk” you through the timeline so bear with me this will be one of my longer posts:

They say you should always trust your gut, and if there’s something that doesn’t sit well with you then something may be off; that’s how I felt a few months ago. My original symptom and practically my only symptom besides feeling tired even though I’d just awaken were my headaches, headaches that would slowly creep on me and wouldn’t go away. The headaches started off small, and like any other headaches eventually these headaches became worse. There would be times where I’d have headaches for three days or almost a week and I’m the type where I would only take a pill when I absolutely needed to. The headache that finally got me to think about whether my headaches were serious was the headache I got on Thanksgiving, I remember it started off as a normal headache and then throughout the day the headache felt like someone had taken a hammer and hit me in my head. I remember taking ibuprofen and it did absolutely nothing, I remember my parents and boyfriend telling me to go the doctor, and I had planned to but I didn’t make an appointment until January and that’s how everything came about.

January Doctors Appointment:

I remember walking into my doctor’s appointment thinking I was just going in for a physical, and to tell my doctor about my headaches and the symptoms I was having such as fatigue and the sore joints I’d been having for a long time (if you’re a close friend or have worked with me then you know about the sore joints lol). I told my doctor about my headaches I was having for the past 6 months, my tiredness, and my sore joints and to my surprise she ordered blood work and ordered an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Going for my first of many MRI’s I didn’t expect much, I didn’t expect for them to find anything and I was pretty calm despite being fairly claustrophobic. Once your images are complete the technician then puts the images on a CD and gives it to you, I remember going back to my apartment and plopping the CD in my computer and looking at the images and although I remember seeing the image below and thinking “I wonder what that is?”, but my boyfriend told me not worry about it and to wait until the doctor called so I went about my life until the doctor called.

The First Phone Call:

When the doctor called I was honestly in shock, my doctor told me they found a mass on my brain that was just below 5cm and that it could either be a brain tumor or that I could have multiple sclerosis, multiple sclerosis seemed like a possibility because of the sore joints I’ve had for years, but after seeing the images I was sort of skeptical that’s what it could be. My doctor then sent me to get another MRI, but with contrast just to justify the first images they received and I remember feeling more anxiety because I knew that there was an issue. After receiving the MRI my doctor called to let me and my mom know that it wasn’t multiple sclerosis and it was a glial or glioma tumor, she then recommended me to a neurosurgeon near my school which we went to go see but then decided to go see a second neurosurgeon at Baylor Hospital and decided that Dr. Barnett would be the one to remove my tumor on February 23rd.

#braintumor #background #George #TheTumor