They found a large mass in my brain. This text was sent by my husband Steven from the hospital. I re-read it, hoping I’d misinterpreted it, but I didn’t. She had been complaining of dizziness for weeks and said it was getting worse. He also lost hearing in one ear. He mentioned that he would go to the emergency room if the dizziness did not subside by morning. It wasn’t the first (or second or third) time he’d been hospitalized for vertigo, so I wasn’t expecting much.
Every time he went there was no real response. Some medical personnel have blamed stress or anxiety for dizziness. Some primary care physicians—and even an otolaryngologist—did not order further tests. For decades, his symptoms were dismissed every time. It was the first time we got a real answer and we were both shocked. Sometimes when you believe your symptoms have no real cause, you start to believe them.
It can be challenging to make an accurate diagnosis with frequent, often benign symptoms. “The problem is that (vertigo and patchy hearing loss) are so common that sometimes doctors are too quick to worry or stress about it. Hamid DjalilianMD, a professor of otolaryngology, neurosurgery, and biomedical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, tells SELF. “While doctors are very good at treating syncope, they drop the ball when it comes to asymmetric hearing loss or chronic vertigo,” he says. “For this reason, if you feel like something is off but feel fired, one of the best things you can do is consult a professional.”
My husband had surgery to remove as much of the four centimeter tumor as possible. But as Dr. Djalilian points out, the size of the tumor can increase the risks of surgery. “The main issue we worry about during surgery is preserving critical functions like the nerve that controls facial movement or hearing. Large tumors can increase the complexity of surgery,” he says. Unfortunately, because it was so big, the surgery had life-changing consequences: it left him paralyzed on the left side of his face and throat.
But a lab analysis confirmed some good news: it wasn’t cancer. It was an acoustic neuroma — a type of “usually slow-growing tumor that develops from the balance and auditory nerves that supply the inner ear.” National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
