Last Updated: 9/7/01

I remember the day clearly when the Doctor called. I was laying on the couch with my foot in a cast,recovering from ankle surgery when the phone rang. I picked it up and it was Dr.B's voice. He said I have a tumor at the base of my brain. I asked if it was operable, and he said NO. He did say that I needed surgery right away for a shunt. A shunt is a device that goes into your brain and comes out and drains into either 3 places; the heart, the stomach or the chest. It drains Cerebral Spinal Fluid(CSF) for my brain made the normal amount but the Brainstem tumor BLOCKED the flow of CSF fluid, so I had to have a shunt.

The year this ALL happenned was May of 1989, 1 month before my 19th birthday!! I had just finished my freshman year of college in the state of Missouri. I had to suddennly stop everything and fight for my life!! My Neurosurgeon(NS) said that I had LESS THAN 2 YEARS TO LIVE!! WELL, I think I have proved him WRONG!! It has now been 12 years and 3 months that I have lived!! Yeah!! I ended up firing the first NS and getting an excellent 2nd one! His name was Dr.W. I did however have Gamma Knife Radiation on October 3,1990 and April 4th,2001. It went very well. I had a reoccurrence of the brain lesion on my January 26th,2001 MRI films.

At the time of radiation,I believe Mom and Dr.W thought the tumor was malignant, that is why radiation was performed. A few years later though, come to find out that what I had was actually a Benign Cavernous Hemangioma MEANING it was just a clump of blood vessels but just in a bad place,it was in the brain. My sisters have had clumps of blood vessels but they have been in the feet or on the liver. It is hereditary though.

The main point in all of this is that I switched Doctors for the last time,so this final Doctor could take out my brainstem lesion,which he did,after it had been in me 8.5 years!! Technology finally caught up with me!!! And, even with 14 shunt revisions, I am still alive and kicking!!!! Yes,I am a veteran and a survivor!!!

My FINAL Doctor is Dr. Eugene George of the Univerisity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas! He is FANTASTIC!!!

Becca