The Doctor Told Me My Brain Was a Ticking Time Bomb
On our last night in Honolulu, my husband and I were having a glass of wine at the Sheraton Waikiki, gushing over the exquisite sunset. We had put off packing for our return home because we were determined to squeeze out every bit of the afterglow of a rare vacation. As we walked back to our hotel, we passed a Baskin-Robbins. Each of us bought a two-scoop cone. I remember thinking — this is at least 500 calories, but I can lose the excess weight when we get back to LA. Little did I know that I’d never get to finish that cone.
We headed back to the hotel planning to walk the back route along the beach that would take us on scenic pathways around fragrant trees to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where we had splurged on an ocean-view room for the last two nights of our Hawai’i stay.
Oah’u had been my home for over a decade, and as a young adult, I reveled in the beauty and serenity of Island life. I had earned a BA in radio and television broadcast from the University of Hawaii and was blessed with landing good jobs and making wonderful friends. Several of us had moved to Hawai’i from far-flung places about the same time in the 70s. My best friend continues to live there, which is the chief reason we return to the Islands as often as we can.
I took a bite of my cone as we started down the stairs to the hotel’s courtyard. In that moment, my foot overshot the first step and caught the second with my heel. I levitated for a split second and slammed onto concrete taking the full brunt on my right hand and forehead. I lay there listening to people running toward me and recall someone taking my arm, immobilized in a saluting position, to rearrange it so that the EMTs could get me onto a gurney; I howled in pain. I would bet that most injured people don’t remember the sound of their own ambulance’s siren screaming toward the hospital, but I did, and I was scared.
It was close to 11 pm when the EMT’S delivered me to the emergency room. The radiologist CAT-scanned my head, and the doctor on duty reset my dislocated arm. My husband and I went back and forth trying to decide whether I should call my girlfriend and let her know what had happened. I decided not to, because her husband had just pulled a 12-hour shift at his job, and I didn’t want to wake them because of some stupid accident that was my own fault. Other than a bump on the head and injured arm my injuries were deemed non-life-threatening. By the time we left for the hotel, it was nearly 3 am, and we had a plane to catch at 9 am that morning. So much for a good night’s sleep.
With my arm in a sling, I packed the best I could, and the next morning we headed back to Los Angeles.
A day later, my heart almost stopped when I looked in the mirror and noticed what appeared to be a blue trail under my skin between my eye and nose. Looking more closely, I could see it moving! Thinking the worst, I called my doctor and described it. There was a moment of silence on the other end, and instead of dismissing my fear that it was something serious, he told me to get to the closest emergency room, Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, for a CAT scan. Okay. That’s scary enough, but when the physician on duty explained the scan’s result, what he said was frightening.
“Aside from a small fracture that caused the bleeding near your eye, which will heal just fine, we’ve discovered a garden variety meningioma. We’re concerned that there’s edema and inflammation on the tumor, and it’s very large,” he added. Then he asked, “have you been having seizures?” “No,” I answered, imagining what it would be like to experience a mind-blowing convulsion while driving 65 mph on the San Diego freeway at rush hour.
“The tumor should come out right away, or you will likely have seizures; the lesion appears to have been there for quite some time,” he explained.
I was stunned. Everything I had ever read or imagined about brain surgery raced through my mind. Would I die on the operating table? Is the tumor cancerous? Could I end up a vegetable?
The sheer complexity of the brain and its role as the master of all body controls qualifies it as one of the most vulnerable surgical targets in the body. The intensity and duration of side effects from brain surgery vary in accordance with the reason for the operation and the area of the brain on which the operation was carried out. In some uncommon cases, people have had to re-learn some or all basic skills such as reading and writing. Add to that the potential for infection, bleeding, stroke, or seizures, and the possibility that I might not recover was terrifying.
I asked the ER doctor who in his opinion was the best brain surgeon, and without hesitation, he answered “*Daniel Kelly,” who is director of the Pacific Brain Tumor Center and Pacific Pituitary Disorders Center at Providence Saint John’s Health Center.
The next day, Dr. Kelly’s nurse called to schedule an appointment to meet with the doctor and discuss the procedure and outcomes.
I learned in my meeting with Dr. Kelly that the tumor did indeed appear benign. He described how he would extract the lesion, first going through my right eyebrow, a less invasive technique that he had pioneered, then extracting the tumor.
Of course, I had myriad questions about the success of the surgery and possible lingering effects. Would there be vision impairment? Could the tumor grow back? Could I have a stroke on the operating table, and so on.
Dr. Kelly assured me that the possibility of each adverse effect was extremely small. In fact, he said that my brain might even function better. Yeah, sure, I thought. He added that the procedure could take five to six hours under general anesthesia. Surgeons consider a maximum of eight hours under general anesthesia to be safe. My surgery took eight hours.
The first thing for which I was grateful, was that I woke up. Then, Dr. Kelly’s visit letting me know that the tumor was benign and that he had gotten all or almost all of it. Another reason for gratitude was that I seemed to have retained my faculties. In the few days following surgery, I experienced two very unpleasant psychotic episodes, probably a hangover from the anesthesia, which a couple of Valiums took care of.
Over the next 12 years, I’ve had annual MRIs showing that the tumor hasn’t grown back and that the small meningioma remains the same.
It was fortuitous that my meningioma was discovered in the first place, and every few years we return to paradise the celebrate the pure luck that I took that fall down the stairs.
*Dr. Kelly is director and a founder of the Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center and Professor of Neurosurgery at Saint John’s Cancer Institute — www.pacificbraintumor.org and www.pacificpituitary.org: https://www.pacificneuroscienceinstitute.org/brain-tumor/conditions/meningioma/
