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| M.R.I. brain scans. Such images showed a benign, though troublesome, tumor in the author. Credit: iStock |
by Emily Dwass, The New York Times,
27 April 2015
In the frightening world of brain tumors, “benign” is a good word to hear. But even a nonmalignant tumor can be dangerous — especially if, as in my case, it goes undetected, becoming a stealth invader.
“Anecdotally, we often hear about women who were originally misdiagnosed — sometimes for years,” said Tom Halkin, a spokesman for the patient advocacy nonprofit National Brain Tumor Society.
When I developed tingling in my limbs 12 years ago, two Los Angeles neurologists diagnosed Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder in which the immune system attacks the nervous system. The symptoms of numbness and weakness ebbed and flowed for three years. Then one day, I couldn’t slide my right foot into a flip-flop. This got me a ride in a magnetic resonance imaging machine, which revealed a brain mass the size of a tennis ball. It was a benign meningioma, a tumor that grows in the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
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