In the year 2000, I was 34 years old, and I was encouraged to journal about what was going on and a rare diagnosis of having a Vestibular Schwannoma on my left vagus nerve (blocked 50% of my left Carotid artery and causing an aneurysm) but I just didn't have the words for it and at the time I wanted no pictures taken whatsoever. But this time is different, much different. I survived the schwanomma, and my way of saying F-you to the fact that I had lost my voice and needed a prosthesis to aid in speaking was to learn sign language and later to become a sign language interpreter. It was that job, as an educational sign language interpreter that led me to work in a particular high school that as it turns out, experienced a school shooting. No kidding, I couldn't make this stuff up.
Last week a series of reports came out about the shooting, complete with depositions and I chose to start reading the depositions, but then the nightmares started and my blood pressure rose to dangerously high levels, so I decided to stop reading them. A co-worker thought it would be a good idea to tell me that there was something in a local newspaper, a political cartoon as it turned out, that she thought I might like to see. It was mean and distasteful to look at and for her to even think that I might like to see a cartoon poking fun at how the school district had failed the student as well as the rest of us who worked in that school. Well upon looking at it my stress and blood pressure continued to rise to dangerous levels, so I took the next day off of work with the intention of checking in with my doctor. Well that is when things got very interesting very quickly because my physician would not see me instead she told me to go straight to the ER and if there was no one to drive me they would call an ambulance. I called my husband who came straight home and drove me to the ER. Due to my medical history they had me in CT in short order and not long after I heard the them say "paraganglioma" had they not already pumped me full of meds to reduce my blood pressure I would have sat up and yelled 'bullshit' because I know from experience that is code for "there is a tumor-like growth in your head and we just don't know what kind it is yet." Upon looking at my medical record they sent the scan digitally over to another hospital to have Neuro-radiologist take a look at it and almost immediately they actually said the words "schwanomma."
I thought, "I am screwed" those things are rare to begin with and to have a recurrence after 16 years seems even more rare.
Now what?
Well, this time I am going to blog about it. If they come back and say "oops we were wrong it's nothing" well then woohoo, you will hear about it on the blog. If they come back and say yes it is back and it is a regrowth of the original or that it is a totally separate tumor, you will hear about it on this page. I will pull no punches only the truth, good bad or indifferent. I may post pictures of my scans, surgery (if any) scars, whatever. If I have to go through this a second time then I want it to be an education for everyone else.
If you look closely at this image of my scan, you will see what looks like a starburst of reflection. That is from the titanium aneurysm colis that were place in the first surgery prior to removing the first tumor. Ya gotta admit it...pretty cool huh?
