When I was in a ‘Dilemma’ about my road to recovery

I have two kids - one aged 6 years and other 9. I’m a practisioner Nurse in a governement hospital in abuja, Nigeria and my husband is a public servant. Happily married for 10 years, juggling between job and house work and suddenly one day - experienced a terrible headache which lasted for 15 or more minutes. Being a nurse, thought to be a non-serious issue and took a pill for the pain. But this was just the beginning….

After couple of days during the office hours, again felt that same excrusiating head pain and this time it was rotating all over the head. I consulted my department and they advised to meet the physician doctor for physical evaluation.

As usual, I was given a different set of pain medications though this time it came with take some days rest advised. Then everything was back to normal except a sudden burst of another painful episode exaclty a month’s later and this time around it made me really worried.. I got scared and many questions started popping my head about this unusual health situation.

Upon meeting our local physician for as many times, he recommended to visit a neurosurgeon which in turn advised me to undergo contrast brain MRI. The next day the result of the scan came which literally stopped by world. …..It turned out to be couple of Brain Masses / brain tumors and the worst part was - some of them were spreading.

For couple of days, imagine the circumstances that you are told about this ‘ticking bomb’ inside your head which would grow more and more and the growth would cause compresion of the vital and delicate nerves inside the head which would alter the body functions - are the most fearful and equally depressing moment of your life and you start asking questions to ‘God’.. Why me.

Now comes the dilemma part - The neurosurgeon and team had couple of round table meetings about the approach - Whether to operate to treat the brain tumor masses or refer to more specialised center for Radiosurgery. The easy way out was to simply hide the important facts / outcomes about the standard procedure but considering the size and number of the masses, they presented various options to me and asked me to ‘Choose’.

The first was to ‘Operate’ as there are always limitations to surgery, though most of them are covered by the most experienced neurosurgeons and some are not citing medical reasons or some other.

The second was to use high dose of radiation to kill the growth of the brain tumor masses by technique referred as ‘RADIOSURGERY’.
The third was the combination of option 1 and option 2.

I asked my doctor about the survival rate percentage, up and down sides of all options and finally the success rate. The open surgery method always have risk though most of the neurosurgeons preferred doing surgery on tumors. But in my case, due to the multiple brain tumor masses and after series of discussion, we concluded and picked the option 2 i.e. Radiosurgery.

I decided to visit India after consulting the doctors.

To summarise my experience, I witnessed:
-Pain
-Problems
-Fear
-Loneliness
-Change in my behaviour
when I was diagnosed with brain tumor.

Then came:
-Hope
-Compassion
-Positive Energy
-Survival Instincts
when I decided to fight.

It’s not easy to understand what the other person go through these difficult situations and we only realise the true meaning of the suffering when you enter in the the same line of sufferings and being a Nurse, it was a life changing experience for me. I thank ‘God’, my family and doctors to give me this second chance to embrace my life once again.