I Needed it Out

Because our insurance wouldn't cover surgery at the University of Utah Medical Center, I was scheduled for surgery to have the tumor removed at the Huntsman Cancer Institute on March 28, 2008. When we arrived for my appointment, I was so weak that I couldn't stand up on a scale to be weighed, so they weighed me in bed. I was five-foot-five and weighed 98 pounds.

I was taken in to surgery without delay. Of course, I have no memory of the actual surgery, but I learned later that the tumor had been growing on cranial nerve VII which controls facial movements. The surgeon removed it by drilling through the base of my skull, traveling through the right inner ear, leaving me completely deaf in that ear. This also deprived me of my balance. I had to train with physical therapists to relearn how to walk.

One thing I remember is that after the surgery, the surgeon told me that he had to remove some fat from my body to fill the hole left in my skull. He told me that he had a hard time finding a place on my body that had enough fat to use. I didn't understand this at the time, but later my husband told me they needed to keep my brain from falling out of my head.

After a week of recovery from the surgery, I was scheduled for three weeks of whole-head radiation at the hospital. I was so weak and sick that I could not endure the 90-minute drive to the hospital and back. After the first week, my sister Amber, whose home was much closer to a hospital with a radiation center, invited me to live with her for the next two weeks of my radiation treatments. I was grateful for Amber's kindness and generosity and gladly accepted her offer.

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