Tonight as we rolled on our sides at the end of yoga, we were told to think of something we are grateful for.

I thought of good health.

Today I am grateful for good health.

For myself and my family.

The side effects of my own personal health scare are invisible at first glance to strangers, but once you get to know me you’ll realise pretty quickly just how deaf I am.

In 2009 I went and got an mri of my head (purely because I couldn’t go by the Doctors words anymore and I had to prove it myself).

For the previous two years, I had gone from not noticing any symptoms to becoming pretty deaf (46% hearing).

I couldn’t hear the rain anymore when I was laying in bed with my left ear up.

I was having dizzy spells and vertigo when I would stand up or lay down.

My symptoms were increasingly becoming worse and more visible to me.

It started to really impact my daily life.

But on the outside I looked fit and busy and young. I went to the gym, I ran in alot of running races, and I was a busy mum.

I was 33 years old.

Aside from going deaf, the doctors didn’t see any evidence to perform an mri so they kept waiting.

My doctor hadn’t seen an Acoustic Neuroma in a patient in 25 years and he’d never had one in Juneau, Alaska where I was living.

So he thought my chances of having one was rare, despite the symptoms I was telling him.

When he told me to come back in another 6 months, I said I couldn’t.

I wanted an answer.

The mri confirmed what I already knew.

Something was growing in my head.

A brain tumour.

But it was the ‘good’ sort of brain tumour.

One that 98% of the time is benign.

One that would only take my hearing, sever my balance nerve and reroute facial nerves and neck muscles, and NOT take my life.

I’d told the Doctor that I could feel the effects of something growing in my head for years. So when I finally got the results, I was a combination of a basket case of tears, feeling uncertain of my future and immensely frustrated that he hadn’t been more proactive.

I felt let down.

The tumour had just had more time to grow. It was classed as a medium size and needed to be removed.

I was scared.

By then I had settled down.

I’d been married 6 years. We were renovating a house, and had 3 young children.

Thoughts of my own childhood started plaguing me.

I didn’t want to die and leave them.

And I didn’t want to go through brain surgery.

Three weeks after the findings, I left my kids with their grandparents in Alaska and went with my husband to Seattle where I would spend the next 6 weeks.

We had all had an early family Christmas the week before since we wouldn’t be with the kids on Christmas Day.

There was nearly a week of pre surgery formalities and appointments.

On 22 December I walked into the waiting room and the nurse came and got me without me even having time to hug my husband.

I was gowned up, and my arm was poked and prodded with anaesthesia needles, and I had my vitals checked. My blood pressure was soaring from my nerves.

Suddenly everything felt real.

I was sitting there, about to trust all these busy people with my life. Hoping that they could keep my facial muscles in tact, remove the tumour safely, and not kill me in the process.

I walked into the operating room and laid on the surgery table. They put a mask on me, talked nicely and had me countdown… and I drifted off.

I was in surgery for six and a half hours.

The ear, nose and throat surgeon cut behind my ear, drilled through the skull to my ear canal, redirected and severed nerves along the way and then passed the rest of the job onto the neurosurgeon who peeled all the tumour off that had mushroomed out and was pushing on the brain. They cut an incision in my abdomin, sucked some body fat out of me (and I didn’t have much at the time), and put that into the space they had to fill in my head so I wouldn’t have any leaks.

Success.

Tumour free.

I woke up with severe twitches and a reaction to an overdose of anaesthesia.

I couldn’t stop shaking and kicking as I had constant pins and needles and couldn’t keep still.

It did wear off.

And then came the intensely painful migraine that just stayed for days on end. I would need my face covered with a cloth as I couldn’t handle any light.

My vision was blurry.

My eyelids weren’t working properly anymore. They didn’t close shut properly and they moved at different times. One would open while the other would shut.

Everything in my head was slow.

My brain was slow.

The medication I was on was sweet relief and nauseating. Just so many different types to keep me ‘comfortable’.

My favourite was morphine.

It was instant. And that was all I wanted. Immediate relief to remove me and put me to sleep.

I felt like the constant shotgun pain was never ending. But the Doctor kept reassuring me that it would improve.

Johnny Depp of all people frequented my room in my hallucinations.

He was a pirate. In the Caribbean. It was weird but it was real I tell you!

I couldn’t stand the pain of the surgery site and that it felt like I’d been whacked in the head ten times with a baseball bat.

I could no longer hear anymore out of my left ear and so I had such a loud head noise going on from the ear damage, like a jet was flying in my head, and a ringing/tinnitus that has never gone away.

I couldn’t keep any food down since they had severed my balance nerve.

So my body was sent into a spiral when I sat up.

On about day five I progressed from just sitting up to getting out of bed and shuffling with a walker for about 10 metres.

It took ages.

My husband was shocked at how much my body had been set back. I sat for a long time after my few steps before beginning the slow shuffle putting one foot in front of the other again. Teaching my brain and my eyes the art of being able to balance upright while holding on to a walker with two hands and not vomiting.

Skills!

I practiced daily with the physio.

I was in the hospital for 10 days.

When I was able to go a full day being able to keep all my food down, and by ‘food’ I mean ‘mush’ because I had facial muscle weakness on the surgery side so half my face wasn’t working.

I had a half smile, drooled and swallowing was difficult. But I got the all clear from the surgeons to go and stay with my husbands amazing brother and wife. They were so good and patient with me.

Another month in Seattle, with post surgery vists, having stitches removed, and checks to make sure there would be no cerebral brain fluid leaks and I got the all clear to fly back to my family in Alaska.

My husband had only been able to come down for the week of the surgery so I hadn’t seen him in over a month and I missed them all so much.

Theres nothing like suffering when the ones we love are miles away.

When I returned to Alaska I was able to balance and walk with 2 hiking poles to steady me.

I’m a determined one and I was fighting this battle well.

I put on my brave face for everyone on my return.

My eyes still didn’t work properly and I had physio treatments on my facial muscles to stimulate them into working again.

Once I’d gotten through the hell of those initial weeks and was able to get off the heavy medication I started to feel like my brain was speeding up a bit.

I went down to one hiking stick and increased my walking distance over time.

Step by step.

I remember after 6 months feeling really proud to do a step class at the gym again.

It was such a weird feeling for my head, but a huge accomplishment.

Days turned into weeks which turned into years.

Progressive years.

Now my signs are invisible.

Still, my stamina has been forever changed with that surgery.

I am not the same person I was before it.

The energiser bunny that could go on and on now needs naps.

My brain needs naps.

It’s a ton more work for the brain having single sided deafness and it exhausts my whole nervous system feeling any stress in my nerves now. My face gets sore, the ringing in my ear gets louder and I can’t cope with noise.

But it could have been much worse.

I was the lucky one.

There’s so much more I could say.

But I’ll just say that today I am grateful for good health.

This was a long road to recovery but I got there.

I don’t want to take it for granted.

Good health is life giving.