It’s been a while since I checked out my blog – thanks so much to those people reading it – or uploaded anything onto Wattpad. I just wanted to explain why I’ve not been around these past few months.
If I’m honest, I’d been having balance issues for some time – following a few bouts of vertigo which I first experienced back in 2019. I didn’t take this as seriously as I evidently should have – and then the pandemic got in the way – and so it was only in the Autumn of last year that I finally decided that I really ought to get checked out.
The GP told me that dizziness can be associated with just about any illness that there is – and she sent me for various checks, including to an ENT doctor who confirmed that there was a problem with my vestibular system – and off I went for an MRI.
I can remember that, even while I was actually having the MRI, I was still gaslighting myself into believing that nothing was wrong, and that this was probably just a residual ear infection. So it came as something of a surprise when the radiologist ushered me into his office and showed me the walnut size lump nestling above my right ear. That was the moment when I finally accepted that I had a problem.
The lump was identified as a vestibular schwannoma – sometimes also called an acoustic neuroma – and was a benign brain tumour. They’re pretty rare – according to the British Acoustic Neuroma Association, they occur in about two out of every hundred thousand people. So it’s kind of like winning a lottery ticket that really sucks. Along with the dizziness, people normally develop hearing loss – which I didn’t – and tinnitus – which I did.
I got fairly mixed messages from the radiologist – along the lines of ‘we know what it is, there’s no need to worry, it’s not cancer, but you really need to do something about it right now.’ The issue with vestibular schannomas is that while they rarely prove fatal, they can do quite a bit of brain damage in their own way – mostly by pressing on the cerebellum which can lead to a breakdown in fundamental physiological functioning. The middle of April therefore saw me booked in for a craniotomy – a procedure via which the neurosurgeons open up the skull behind the ear and take the tumour out in what I believe is a piecemeal fashion.
It’s safe to say that after this I wasn’t at my best – I spent a good part of the following week throwing up, before a weird moment of elation the weekend afterwards when I believed I was over the worst, only to discover that spinal fluid had begun to leak through my stitches. This then necessitated another operation to put things right.
It’s now over two months, and I’m on the mend – and incredibly grateful to the dedicated health professionals who helped me. My balance is much better, and I have far more energy. Unfortunately – and this is my main reason for writing this piece – surgery for a large vestibular schwannoma almost always incurs a price, and that came in the form of permanent unilateral deafness. It’s something that I guess I’ll get used to, but it has somewhat thrown my work as a teacher into jeopardy.
So I guess the message of all of this is that if you ever feel that something isn’t quite right, trust yourself. Trust your body – it’s trying to tell you something – and get yourself checked out sooner rather than later.
Kate Cudahy 