Woman Who Thought Tingling In Her Cheek Was Stress Diagnosed With Meningioma, A Brain Tumour; Know the Symptoms

A 38-year-old woman after a recent “trip of her dreams” to Antarctica noticed a tingling feeling on her left cheek. Dismissing it as stress, she ignored it until the “feeling” spread to her nose, eye, and head and became so intense that she had to clutch her head in agony.

Nicola Shaw from Manchester went to see the doctor who told her to get an MRI done, which revealed she had meningioma—a rare and dangerous tumour that was located right next to her brain stem and left optic nerve.

Soon, Nicola had a ten-hour surgery which was able to remove 95 per cent of the tumour but it grew back by 17 millimeters in the next six months. She then underwent Gamma Knife radiotherapy, a non-invasive radiotherapy treatment that uses gamma rays to treat tumors and lesions in the brain, which took a huge toll on her health. She suffered from double vision, memory loss, and jaw pain.

“At the time, I thought this was an overreaction, but I went along with it and saw a specialist at a private hospital in Chicago. When the neurologist suggested I needed an MRI, I hesitated, thinking it was unnecessary and over the top. Eventually, I gave in, never expecting what was to come,” said Nicola, a primary school teacher.

“He (the doctor) explained that my tumour was a nine out of ten in terms of difficulty to remove, and only 2 per cent of cases are found in this location. It didn’t fill me with much hope, but after a second opinion, we decided to operate,” she said.

The aftermath of Nicola’s surgery was too much to handle for her. “They had to insert four screws into my head, numbing each area with three injections per screw. The pain was excruciating, and I screamed and begged them to stop,” she said.

“When they reached the fourth screw, they had to avoid my titanium plate and, in doing so, clipped my eyelid, causing it to bleed and giving me a black eye and scar,” added Nicola.

She then returned to the UK to focus on her physical and mental recovery, spending the next nine months healing while attending sessions with a therapist. Now, with regular scans to monitor her brain a year after the radiotherapy, the tumour is fortunately stable.

A meningioma is a tumour that forms in your meninges, which are three layers of tissue that cover and protect your brain and spinal cord. According to experts, meningiomas originate from arachnoid cells in particular, which are cells within the thin, spiderweb-like membrane that covers your brain and spinal cord.

This is one of three layers that make up the meninges.

Doctors say most meningiomas are not cancerous, though they can sometimes be malignant. A benign tumor does not spread to other parts of your body. Meningiomas much more commonly affect adults than children, although children can still develop them. The average age at diagnosis is 66 years. Black people and women are more likely to have meningiomas, likely due to hormonal factors.

Because meningiomas are typically slow-growing tumors, they may not cause noticeable symptoms until they grow large enough to push on important structures around them. A few of these include:

Get Latest News Live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from Health and around the world.