Being pregnant for the first time is an exhilarating experience. Like most other women, I’d read everything I could to prepare for my pregnancy, and I made sure to eat right, exercise and take my prenatal vitamins.
As a physician, I was well aware that my body would go through some drastic changes during pregnancy. From hormonal imbalance to weight gain, from a heightened sense of smell to unusual cravings, I was ready for it all. So when I began to experience blurry vision in my left eye, I chalked that up to my pregnancy, as well. Fluid retention is very common during pregnancy and often causes temporary changes in the shape and thickness of the cornea.
Just to be safe, my obstetrician checked my blood pressure and tested me for gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. The tests came back normal, so I didn’t think much more about it.
[See: How to Cope With Gestational Diabetes.]
But the problem persisted over the next few weeks, and because I’m a pathologist who relies heavily on my eyesight to do my job, I decided to have more tests done. I made an appointment to see my ophthalmologist, hoping she would have an answer to my blurry vision.
She did. And it was an answer no one ever wants to hear.
Her examination found that I had a paralysis of my left 6th cranial nerve, but a more in-depth work-up was needed to find the reason for the nerve paralysis. However, because I was more than 6 months pregnant, doctors were limited in the tests they could do to determine what it was. For the sake of my baby’s health, in fact, I could only undergo one MRI without contrast. But that was enough.
The images showed a tumor in the worst possible place. It was a large, nonmalignant mass positioned just behind my left eye, near the hippocampus and hypothalamus areas of my brain, which regulate short-term memory and hormone function, respectively. The tumor had also encased my left internal carotid artery, making it inoperable.
Here’s the worst part: The type of tumor I had is called meningioma, which was not only resistant to chemotherapy, but was actually being fed by the hormones my body was producing as a result of my pregnancy. In other words, the longer my pregnancy went, the bigger the tumor got.
We were in a race against time. We had to wait until my baby got big enough to survive outside the womb, but not too long, or the tumor would cost me my eyesight and short-term memory.
[See: The Best and Worst Exercises for Pregnant Women.]
At this point, it might have been easy to focus on all the negative aspects of the situation, but actually, the timing couldn’t have been better. Let me explain.
Because the tumor was inoperable and was resistant to chemotherapy, the only way to treat it was with radiation. But even that has its risks. The tumor was close to so many sensitive and vital areas that the radiation used to kill the tumor cells might also damage healthy tissue in my eye and brain.
What I needed was radiation therapy with pinpoint accuracy. A dose so focused and precise that it would kill tumor cells without posing a high risk of harming healthy tissue. Unfortunately, there aren’t many places that offer that type of treatment.
But it just so happened that within days of inducing labor and safely delivering my son six weeks early, a facility opened its doors less than 30 minutes from my house. The Center for Proton Therapy/UF-Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health had been in the works and under construction for more than five years.
Within days of opening its doors, I was there, as the first patient of Dr. Naren Ramakrishna. Using a machine that is three stories tall and weighs nearly a quarter of a million pounds, Dr. Ramakrishna was able to blast irradiated protons safely through my skull and directly to the tumor.
Typically, doctors use X-rays to perform radiation therapy, which has been the mainstay for tumor and cancer treatments for the last century. The approach has been refined over the years and has proven to be remarkably effective in many cases, but it simply was too risky for mine.
When X-rays are used, they send a sort of very focused wave of radiation to the tumor. That means on the way to the tumor site, healthy tissue is often damaged, as is tissue beyond the tumor, as the X-rays exit the body. In my case, with the tumor situated between my eye and brain and straddling my carotid artery, we simply couldn’t take the chance of damaging any healthy tissue.
That’s why proton therapy is so revolutionary. Using a machine known as a superconducting synchrocyclotron, doctors are able to speed up protons to more than 402 million miles per hour. They determine the speed of the protons by the depth of the tumor. The deeper inside the body they need to go, the faster they accelerate them.
Then, all of that remarkable energy is funneled to a beam that blasts the protons into the body to a target only a few millimeters wide.
Once they are released, the protons act as a kind of Trojan horse. They enter the body without causing damage to any tissue, and once they reach the determined tumor site, they burst open, releasing their energy to kill only the tumor cells. And, unlike X-rays, there is no residual radiation that leaves the body. All the energy is released at the tumor site, so there is no risk of damaging tissue beyond it.
My tumor will never totally be gone, but our hope is that we can use the proton therapy to shrink it by 25 percent to relieve the pressure on my left 6th cranial nerve and stop its growth forever.
[See: 7 Innovations in Cancer Therapy.]
Despite all I’ve been through, I feel blessed. Not only did technology offer me a treatment option I never would have had in the past, but a facility opened near me just in time. There are less than two dozen of these treatment facilities in the U.S., and just when I needed it, one was built practically in my backyard.
I’ve wrapped up my six-week course of treatment, and today my tumor remains in check. And I am forever grateful that this incredibly sophisticated and highly advanced technology is allowing me to enjoy the simplest of life’s pleasures: being a mother to a happy and healthy baby.
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A Race Against Time: the Further I Got Into My Pregnancy, the More My Body Fed a Tumor Near My Brain originally appeared on usnews.com
