“When I got into an accident, crashing into a tree with my car, it actually saved my life,” says the 30-year-old mother of two. “When I was taken to the hospital, upon examination, they saw a large tumor in the brain.”
Now the woman has every chance of recovery, but if there had not been an accident, the tumor would have been discovered much later and this would most likely be fatal.
At first, Lauren Neville began to have incomprehensible nervous seizures. They were repeated daily, but the woman believed that this was a consequence of depression or panic attacks, which from time to time she had happened before.
For more than two years, Lauren often had dizziness and headaches, for which she was prescribed antidepressants.
Lauren works as a nurse in a hospital that treats people with brain problems, so she suspects something serious. However, when she visited as many as three doctors, each of them was sure that it was all about depression and excessive anxiety.
But then, in January 2018, while driving a car, she had a short blackout and Lauren crashed into a tree. Fortunately. she was not traveling at high speed and escaped with only bruises. But in the clinic, just in case, they did an MRI of the head and found a tumor in the brain, the size of a golf ball.
It turned out that all these years Lauren had been growing the so-called glioblastoma - a malignant brain tumor that grows very quickly. Soon Lauren underwent surgery and had 80% of her tumor removed. In the future, Lauren will need many more treatments, including expensive chemotherapy and another operation, for which she is now collecting money from benefactors.
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Now Lauren says she is very angry with the doctors. Instead of examining her for a tumor, as her symptoms hinted eloquently enough, doctors gave her psychiatric diagnoses and referred her from one specialist to another.
But most of all, Lauren is upset because even now, when the tumor was not at a fatal stage and she has a chance of recovery, she can still die and leave her two young children without a mother.
Soon Lauren will have to go through several more scans to understand whether the operation helped her and whether the tumor is growing again. Her further treatment will depend on this.
Lauren also experienced side effects after surgery in the form of short-term memory problems. She can perfectly remember what happened years ago or a day ago, but not remember what she did half an hour ago.