Last year I noticed (after replacing my headphones...) that I couldn't hear in my right ear. I also began to get dizzy and fall in the shower constantly, to the point I had to have special modifications made. I didn't realise this was related, but in about March and April, I began to feel so constantly nauseous whenever I moved, my head constantly spinning from the slightest motion, that I threw up several times a day. I was told I had permanent right ear hearing loss and it was most likely from a virus I'd had around the time I noticed I couldn't hear. About a week later I got sick of throwing up (threw up literally nine times in a morning, I counted -- I threw up food, then water, then acid, then began to dry retch after the ninth time because I ran out of things to throw up). I went to the hospital several times about it; they'd put me on the IV and I'd lie still in bed, so then I'd stop throwing up and they'd send me home. A doctor in the ER recognised my symptoms because his mother had had them, though, and ordered an MRI. It is quite possible that this saved my life, and it blows me away even a year later.
When I had the MRI, I was exhausted (I stayed awake all night so I could sleep in the machine, because I've had MRIs before and the noise and confinement scares me) and not even thinking straight. But I just thought it'd be routine and they wouldn't find anything. I asked them, 'How long do you think this will take?' 'Half an hour.' They woke me up and I asked, 'So how long was I in there?' 'About an hour.' I just figured I'd moved in my sleep and they'd had to take new images because I messed them up or something.
They made me wait at the hospital, which (as a medical veteran) I was not anticipating, and I just slept fitfully, but eventually I became fairly concerned. At 5 PM my mom yelled at the nurses and they made the doctor come and tell me I had a brain tumour, which was causing significant intracranial pressure and had caused a lot of damage to my 8th cranial nerve (the vestibulocochlear/acoustic nerve, which controls your hearing and balance -- no wonder!), and I would have to go to another city to be treated, due to my local hospital lacking a neuro ward. I was in shock and cried a lot. I wrote letters to a lot of my friends on my iPhone because I couldn't sleep and I thought I would surely die.
The next day I was taken by ambulance about five hours away to the hospital where I'd live for the next month. I was in a fairly cheerful frame of mind and felt hopeful that I could be treated, since that is what I was told. I arrived there and my neurosurgeon visited me. He didn't say a word to me, just asked for my MRIs. He looked at them and said, 'This will be challenging; she will die soon if we don't get it out.' The words 'This will be challenging' (or he might've said difficult, idk anymore, I was sleep deprived and in shock) made me cry hysterically. I thought again for sure I would die that night.
After talking to my medical team the next morning, that changed. I would have surgery in two weeks on my brain. I wasn't afraid because I'd be anaesthetised. I thought, 'Isn't the worst part waiting?' I felt really bad for my mom because I would just be knocked out for the ten or so hours the surgery ended up taking. I trusted my doctors to make me better and I had no choice anyway. I realised that it was having that surgery or dying. If I died from the surgery then so be it, I didn't want to die at all but I would've died anyway. But chances were that I'd live and I'd have a new chance at happiness, and I wanted to get better.
At the time I'd been severely and suicidally depressed for seven years. I sat around on the internet and deep in thought most of the time, and I was able to work through this depression because I finally realised I was grateful for the love of the people who supported me during this time, to be alive, to have another chance to experience all the beauty and wonder in everyday life and the world as a whole, and I was oddly happier than I'd ever been in my life before then. I was not afraid.
I know many people around me were afraid and I was scared of my facial nerve being severely damaged and living with facial palsy, since I was told that almost certainly would happen. But I was looking forward to having the future back. The heavy steroids I was on got rid of my nausea; as someone who's always sick, I felt physically better than I'd ever felt in my life. They also made me severely hyperglycaemic with lasting effects, so I had to take insulin, which meant my diet was severely restricted. I struggled a bit with having no freedom because I was stuck in the hospital taking insulin (and was also in a wheelchair because of my balance problems making it dangerous to walk), which made me cry a few times, but on the whole I was happy.
I have never felt so bad physically as after my surgery. I had no idea... had no idea of the sheer level of the exhaustion brain surgery gives you. I could not walk. I could not open my eyes. I struggled to think. I was in pain and constantly on morphine. It took me a week of starting to practise walking again to learn to walk more than a few steps. At the start, I'd walk to the door and collapse and they'd have to put me back in the bed, where I'd sleep for hours. Nothing prepares you for that kind of weakness and fatigue. I spent the first three days after the surgery fighting pneumonia too, hallucinating constantly and utterly delirious. It was terrible, nobody had told me I could be so sick and weary, that it would be so hard to recover. I knew it was going to take months to get back to normal, but I did not know I would be unable to even walk, to even sit up.
Coming out of that heavy anaesthesia at around 10-11 PM felt like waking from a coma. I was so dry and ill and dazed and didn't understand much, but I knew I was alive, and I was happy. I whispered thank you and then started bitching with all my strength about wanting water and the nurse gave me some (although you're meant to have crushed ice). I promptly threw it up. Yeah. I had a really awful night in intensive care, but I was glad I'd made it. And I was glad I had the support of everyone.
One day my neurosurgeon came to visit me in the morning and he saw that I was lying back, wan and drained, on my pillow. I'd eaten breakfast lying down. He said to me, 'You have to sit up straight to make your lungs stronger. If you don't then the pneumonia will carry you away.' I bolted upright, despite how tired I was. I was terrified of the thought that this chance at happiness I had been given by his capabilities (and others') would be wasted, that after all the fucking trials I'd been through because of a brain tumour I'd die to pneumonia. So I sat up and he petted me on the head and told me I had to sit upright in a chair for three hours a day. I couldn't do it. It was so tiring, so unbearably tiring, that I'd sit in for an hour and beg to be let go. So my mom would give in and I'd collapse in the bed and sleep for hours. Yup. That's what recovering from brain surgery and pneumonia is like. Eventually I was able to be wheeled outside and the feeling of the fresh air filling my tired lungs was so invigorating.
I wanted to go home really badly, so after my neurosurgeon visited me, I willed myself to make it happen. I threw myself into everything except sitting in a chair. Constantly practised walking, did my breathing exercises every hour as instructed, sat up whenever I could, went outside for fresh air. The doctors were surprised by how fast I was recovering from the double whammy of brain surgery and pneumonia, but it was partly because I'm young, partly because they were capable, and partly because of my willpower, I know that and they told me that too. I knew I was lucky to have the strength to fight, so I had to fight with all of it.
Soon I could walk a decent amount, and I was given a walking frame to deal with my severe and permanent imbalance issues. I cannot walk very far safely without it even now, and I daresay I will have it all my life. I don't mind at all, whatever helps me walk safely is a great thing in my eyes. I constantly tripped over and stuff before (partly from the damage to my nerve, partly because I have other neurological impairments), and now that isn't really the case when I'm using my frame, so I was glad. I walk better now than ever. My mom thought I would be too proud to use it, but no, I was thrilled because it was so fucking easy to walk holding onto that thing. I don't see why I shouldn't be proud to use it. I get stared at a lot as a young girl with a walking frame, but I don't care that much, since I used to get stared at a lot anyway for how I'd just kind of teeter all over the place like a Spinda ~_~ So I didn't feel bad about it at all.
They let me home early and I had to be readmitted locally several times with symptoms from my pneumonia, severe headaches after surgery (these eventually went away, but I was taking a cocktail of painkillers every night because one type would wear off before I was allowed to take it again, so I was prescribed about three or four types + paracetamol), and then whooping cough, which I'd caught in that city despite being vaccinated in February (caught it for the second time, mind you) and suffered with all winter :P
