Schwannoma Survivor
I remember when a visit to the dentist for a teeth-cleaning was a routine thing. That was before my brain tumor, bouts of vertigo, and vestibular migraines. Thank God the brain tumor came and went. It was a facial nerve schwannoma, a tumor that embeds itself in the lining of the nerve. They’re very tricky to try to remove from there, without damaging the nerve.
Basically, it can’t be done. When you have a schwannoma, you have a couple of choices. Get it cut out or radial-knifed out, and live with the consequences of permanent damage to the nerve it was embedded in — or do nothing and pray for the best. Those who go the surgical route often have to learn to live with a great deal of pain and discomfort for a long time, in addition to the nerve damage. I know — I met a lot of them on-line, at a facebook group for Schwannoma Fighters and Survivors.
In my case, since it was in my facial nerve, the damage would have been to the left side of my face — it would have gotten all droopy, and could also have impacted my ability to talk, and affected my ability to taste. The doctor opted for the second possible choice of what to do with a schwannoma — wait and watch. Get MRI’s taken every six months, keep an eye on it, and pray it doesn’t grow.
Prayer is something I can do. While I’m not religious — I kind of had my fill of religion growing up Roman Catholic, raised by a father who’d been a Christian Brother for six years before he got out and got married — I do believe in the power of prayer, and I meditate regularly. Both have yielded some amazing results in my life, the most significant being, I’m an alcoholic who is alcohol free for over 41 years, and an addict who is drug-free for close to 39 years. That took a lot of prayer and daily meditation.
I did mention up front that the tumor came and went. The time that it was here, in my head, was a most troubling year and a half. I kept waiting for it to get worse, checking my face in the mirror every morning for any signs of facial dysfunction.
I had some other troubling issues, then. I would wake up in the morning suffering from a full-on bout of vertigo. This began to happen with a regularity, to the point where it was hitting me every ten days or so. While I was very concerned about the schwannoma, the vertigo really began to dominate my life with its disruptiveness. My doctor at the V.A. told me the vertigo was actually being caused by vestibular migraines, and put me on a medication, nortriptyline, to treat that.
Over the course of a year he increased the dosage from 10 mg to 25 mg, and that helped a lot. When I was still having the occasional bout, especially when I flew or did anything especially active, the doctor recommended a surgical procedure that had a small chance of helping, with very little risk. So, I rolled the dice, and got it done. That stopped the vertigo in its tracks, to where I’ve only had two incidents of it in the past year.
Oh yeah, and the tumor? When I went for the results of my third follow-up MRI, the doctor told me the tumor was gone. Just like that. He was a real expert on this particular type of schwannoma, having done his thesis on the 30 year history of treatment of it, and having worked in the clinic that has treated the most number of them. He had this funny look on his face when he told me the tumor was gone. “Doc, have you ever seen this before?” I asked.
He thought about my question for a second, then said, “No, I can’t say that I have. I have heard of things like this, though”, he added, with a bit of a twinkle in his eyes.
But, since all of that occurred, I have noticed that a routine dentist visit like I had this afternoon can put me on my ass for the rest of that day. I don’t get a full-blown case of vertigo, but I always come away feeling traumatized, and just basically wiped out.
However, I do find it hard to complain too much about it, though. When you’ve dodged something like a brain tumor, feeling wiped out from a teeth cleaning kind of pales in comparison. It could be so much worse.
