My sister Options

[Rachel]

Thursday night, we found out my sister, who is only 25, had a massive brain tumor in her frontal left lobe. She had an awful headache for 3 weeks and her boyfriend and I took her to the Tucson ER Thursday night. They did a cat scan and told us they found a mass. The mass was pushing over the right side of her brain and was also cutting off ventricles. I called my parents right away and they came down from Phoenix with our family friend Pam, who works as a nurse at St. Joseph’s hospital. The main concern was that she would seizure. We transferred her via ambulance to the Barrows neurological center, the best in the country, at about 3:30AM Friday morning and she had surgery at 12PM. 4 and 1/2 hours later her surgeon came out and said he was confident that they got the entire thing, which was 5x7x3 cm (looked almost like an egg), and said he thought it was an "aggressive tumor." When asked what the hell that meant, he took it back and said that we wouldn't know anything until pathology tests came back, which should be Tuesday. He said possible treatments would include chemo and radiation if it shows to be cancerous.

When we went to see her after the surgery, she was awake and cracking jokes, 10000 times better than I expected. She had absolutely no idea what was going on, just that she had surgery. Kyle, her boyfriend, and I refused to leave and stayed with her the entire night. Her headache was finally gone and all that hurt was her stapled incision.

She was moved from ICU on Saturday afternoon and is already in a general room. Her vital stats and everything are perfect. After her surgery, her neurosurgen said she was pretty strong. She would be out of the hospital by today, but with the holiday, all the pathology tests are pushed back and she will probably be out Wednesday. We are all pretty sure that the tumor, which looked like it took up almost a 1/4 of her brain, is cancerous and she will need some post-treatment, but she made it through the scariest part.

My sister is an amazing fighter, hours after major brain surgery, she cracked an Arnold joke "It's not a tumor!" (Kindergarten Cop anyone?) She had us so incredibly scared and now she should be out of the hospital in a few days. It blows my mind how strong she is. I can only thank God and continue to thank Him for everything.

As my dad said Thursday night, “These are trying times and we just need to stick together.”