Virginia’s Christmas Blessing
Five years later.
In December of 1997,
Virginia had a brain tumor removed (see Virginia’s
Christmas Blessing). When she
regained control of her extremities and various plumbing functions, she was
sent home to recover. That’s where the
first page ended—and we are just as happy with that outcome now as we were
then…and just as grateful to our Heavenly Father for making it all possible.
The
surgery had very little impact on Virginia’s outward appearance except that the
forced change in hairstyle was so comfortable and easy to take care of that she
may never again wear it longer than a few inches.
But
there were a few surprises.
Several weeks after leaving the hospital, Virginia still was not able to
tell what position her left arm and leg were in without looking at them. This information from the muscles and nerves
to the brain is called proprioception.
The surgeon told us it might come back over a period of several months,
but if she didn’t have any proprioception from those limbs in six months, it
was not likely that it would ever return.
Four and a half years later, Virginia has adapted to a life without
proprioception from her left arm and leg.
She can still feel with her skin, but the muscles and nerves are
shouting in the dark. I suspect this
leads to quite a bit of subsurface tension as the brain tries to figure out
what to do with these lost synapses, but nobody in Neurology can confirm
that. Virginia says that being able to
feel with the skin, but not with the muscles is kind of like when you’re arm or
leg have been asleep, only without the prickling; and it’s surprising how much
of the tactile sensations we attribute to the skin actually come from the
muscles (for example, everything tickles because the muscles can’t say how far
the skin has been depressed).
What’s
it like living without proprioception? In January,
1999, Virginia was walking across the back yard when her foot rolled off a
clump of grass. She didn’t know what
was happening until she stumbled and heard a crack as her ankle broke. The Emergency Room doctor confirmed the
break, but said he was more concerned about the really bad sprain from the
stumble—“It must hurt like the devil,” he said. Virginia told him she couldn’t feel anything, because the muscles
don’t talk to the brain anymore (or, more correctly, the brain has forgotten
how to listen to them). In Texas, you
can’t drive for a year after a seizure (which was the event that led to
discovery of the tumor), so it wasn’t until the boot came off her foot two
months after she broke her ankle that Virginia was finally able to drive
again—for the first time in a year and a half.
The
big surprise, however, came a year and a half after the surgery. Between the annual exam and the semiannual
exam, the neurosurgeon who had removed the tumor was reassigned to Walter Reed. The new neurosurgeon said that a miniscule
shred of the tumor had been left (the original neurosurgeon had told us that it
was all gone). The tumor was right
against the major vein that runs between the hemispheres of the brain. The surgeon had removed as much of the tumor
as possible without disturbing the vein and risking a stroke. The piece that is left has changed shape
slightly, but it is growing so slowly that the change can only be detected by
measuring it. The surgeon said what is
left of the tumor is unlikely to ever cause any problems…but they are watching
Virginia and getting an MRI every six months to be sure.
Anne,
our handicapped (downs syndrome) daughter had been looking forward to being in
a place of her own (a group home) for five or six years before the
surgery. After the surgery, Virginia
found that she couldn’t manage the stress and tension of living with a mentally
handicapped adult, so we finally found a placement for Anne. She’s been in the group home for several
years, lives a full life, and visits us frequently (Sundays and several
evenings a month).
So
here we are, five years post-op, living a fairly normal life (whatever that
is). We’ve become mostly-empty
nesters—still have the grandkids after school and when Mom’s working. We now have a couple of great-grandkids
(not, unfortunately, in Texas).
Virginia is a Wilton-trained cake magician, and she makes several large
birthday cakes a month for a local retirement center, although she has
given up weddings except for close friends.
She’s taking art classes at night to develop the talent she was
abundantly blessed with. As for me, I
do computer stuff at work (system/network admin), I do computer stuff when I
come home, I even do computer stuff at church (I’m a clerk). In my spare time, I’m converting all our vinyl
recordings to CDs (on the computer, of course) and reading voraciously as
always (e-books on my Palm, of course).
Life
is good. Enjoy it, and don’t ever
forget:
“…in
the first place, [God] hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for
which ye are indebted unto him. And
secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for
which, if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are,
and will be, forever and ever…” (Mosiah 2:23-24 from The Book of Mormon)
and
all he asks is that we try a little harder to do a little better.
References
Find
medical information at the MayoClinic.
The
National Academy of Neruopsychology has produced an excellent article about proprioception
and kinesthesia.
The
University of Pittsburgh maintains a Neuromuscular Research Laboratory, which
includes a Proprioception
Laboratory.