A Houston woman woke up with a splitting headache and assumed she was just hungover after a night of drinking to celebrate her niece's birthday. She suffered from the headache for the entire day and still had it when she went to bed. In her sleep, she had a seizure and her husband realized something was wrong.
Christina Smith was rushed to the hospital, where doctors made a shocking discovery: they found a massive tumor in her brain. The tumor was wrapped around a blood vessel, making surgery extremely difficult and dangerous.
“There was no way to remove that tumor without removing part of that vein,” Dr. John Tynes, chief medical officer at Bayshore Medical Center, told Fox 26 Houston, adding, “When you take out the vein in the brain, as you can imagine, there are risks associated with that — risks like stroke, permanent brain damage, paralysis, so it was a very difficult, very brave decision that the care time at Bayshore and Christina and Willie made, to go ahead and have the surgery.”
Smith was partially paralyzed following the surgery but made a quick and miraculous recovery. She said that she did not need as much rehabilitation as doctors expected and she has already returned to nursing school.
“I was expected to have inpatient rehab and the next thing you know I started recovering a lot faster than normal, so I didn’t need much rehab at all,” Smith said.