rulerofelves

The only symptom that really got me to go to the doctor was that half my tongue was paralyzed. It was atrophied and I didn't really have any control over it. One day, I showed my friend how weird my tongue was and she freaked out and took me to the school nurse who told me to get an MRI as soon as I could. So I did, and that night the hospital called with the results saying that they had found something.

And thank you. :)

For the two months that I was going to about 5 doctor appointments a week, I was in shock I guess. My body and mind never really let me truly think about what was about to happen. But, after the surgery, with all the pain I was in and discomfort, I don't want to say I became depressed because that word gets thrown around a lot, but for a while I did think constantly about what would have happened if I had died in surgery. I became obsessed with it and even told my boyfriend because at the time, I was so miserable. I couldn't eat by myself, I wasn't allowed to walk up the stairs to sleep in my own bed, I couldn't go hiking with friends or even down the street to a cafe with them. For a while I wished I had died in surgery leaving everyone with a memory of a young careless girl who had fun and just left too soon, instead of tainting those ideas of who I was with the unhappy miserable girl that I became.

Well I have been consistently clearing y throat since I can remember (because I can't properly swallow due to paralysis of half my throat) so the doctors think I've probably this tumor since.. birth.

Exactly.

It honestly blew me away when I saw the picture of my surgery. I can't even make sense of what's what. I don't see my jaw, my skull. It looks like a giant ball of mush and the fact that they can go in there and work with smaller than hair sized cranial nerves in all of that is the most amazing thing.

Some of those, my mom took of me but the pre-op, post-op, and during pictures were taken by my brain surgeon. I'm not sure how common it is for them to do that but I think they wanted a picture of it because it's the second type of tumor (that they know of) to have existed.

When I found out they took pictures I didn't stop bugging my surgeon until he sent them to me. It was too fascinating to not want to see what the inside of me looks like.