A woman who thought her seizures were due to stress discovered she had a tennis-ball-sized brain tumour squashing her brain. Helen Green, 58, started experiencing seizures and assumed they were down to the stress of the pandemic.
The mum-of-two had a phone consultation with her doctor - who referred her for an MRI scan. Just hours after her scan, Helen was told she had a 6cm tumour growing on the left temporal lobe of her brain.
Doctors were baffled Helen was still walking and talking - due to the size and placement of her tumour - which would usually see patients unable to speak and struggling with long-term memory problems. After her diagnosis, she underwent a four-hour operation during which surgeons successfully removed the tumour.
They confirmed the mass was a low-grade meningioma and Helen spent five days in recovery. She has now recovered from surgery and requires check ups to make sure the tumour hasn't grown back.
Helen, a community champion at ASDA, from Walsall, said: “I got taken to A&E - where I got sat down and given cognitive tests. I was confused to why I was being checked over and over again. At the time I didn’t know, but they knew about the tumour. I went into hospital at 8.30am and at 3.30pm I was told I had a brain tumour. I thought it was a death sentence.
"I was with my mum, Sheila, 83, we both broke down and then pulled ourselves together and called around the family. I am grateful to be alive and grateful to wake up in the morning.”
Helen named the tumour "duckie egg and the triplets" as it was around the size of a duck egg. The triplets part of the name came from doctors also finding three shadows.
She said: "I couldn’t bring myself to tell people I had a brain tumour. I couldn’t accept what it really was.
"It was hard to come to terms with it but a way for me to cope was to put a positive spin on it. My mum and dad, Brian, 93, and Sheila, 83, needed to know I was doing OK - even though I was crumbling at the time.”
Helen had the operation to remove the tumour in July 2021. Afterwards she struggled with walking, had impaired speech and said she was "physically fatigued".
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Helen still often struggles with her speech and undergoes regular check-ups to make sure that the tumour doesn’t return.
She said: “It is all still overwhelming for me. To think that I had been living all those years and carrying it around with me – the outcome could have been different if I found it earlier.
“I want to be how I used to be but that is not happening. I keep being reminded that it is still early days. I am lucky to be here and grateful to wake up in the morning."
