An Inspiring Patient Story: Kate, a Physician (Pathologist)

In April 2019 I was diagnosed with a skull base meningioma in a very complex area of the brain around the brainstem (the critical main cable transmitting all information from the body to the brain and back). I found myself in what felt like very random situations not understanding what people were saying to me, and at one point I sort of serendipitously realized that it was because I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. One of the things you learn in medical school is that unilateral hearing loss is often more of a concern than both-sided hearing loss. A head and neck (ENT) surgeon told me that I needed an MRI.

So, I had the MRI at 8:00 am, and by 4:30 pm they were calling me back with the results. They described to me a large 3-cm mass in my left CP (cerebellopontine) angle, and it seemed to be involving the auditory nerve on that side. The tumor was significantly pushing my brainstem and was deep in the skull base. There were some features in the imaging that were most predictive of a benign tumor.

I went to see a surgeon at the University of Cincinnati who said that the tumor was big enough to recommend surgery. He listed the nerves that were running in the area of the tumor, and I thought back to my first year of medical school, when I had learned about cranial nerves and what they do. I thought to myself that after surgery, I could have trouble swallowing; I very much enjoy singing, and I might not be able to sing again, to say nothing of the fact that I was almost guaranteed not to hear. The surgery was so risky that it could affect every movement in my body and face due to the adherence and proximity of the large tumor to the brainstem. The risks and complexity of the surgery were overwhelming.