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Voices and Faces.......
"My name is Amanda Ballard. I am almost 18 and I was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor when I was
16. I had had a seizure, it was a grand mal seizure,
January 27, 2002
. It was at school, and I had just gone to first period, and I felt kinda dizzy
and I thought it had been just a little episode that I had had because of being
diagnosed a year before as being hypoglycemic. But something had told me to,
“Just get up, go to the health room.” As soon as I got there, I sat down in the
chair and I had a grand mal seizure. And my nurse had been an ER nurse – she
knew exactly what to do She said I just kicked and threw my arms for like five
minutes straight and then was out for about an hour. When I woke up, she and
my dad were both standing at like the foot of this cot they had put me on. After
that, we went to our family doctor who did all these tests and had me put in for
a CAT-scan, which is where we found out that I had had a malignant brain tumor
they thought had been growing slowly for two to three years and it was on my right
side right above my ear, and was the size of a walnut. After that, we went over
to the neurologist, named Dr Nelson, and he had me admitted straight to the hospital.
The surgery was Thursday, and it was about a three hour surgery and after that
I was in ICU and he said I recovered very well because I was in there for like
eleven hours with it and when I woke up I took my Dad’s mocha instead of eating
the ice, which they said that was a big sign.  A couple of weeks after that we found it that it was true that it was a malignant
brain tumor. Everything was at Duke and up at Duke they told me that there would
be a second surgery and I had all these scans done up there and one of them was
a functional MRI which detected all my speech and hearing centers and instead
of being on the left side like they usually are they were on the right and they
were one centimeter and eight millimeters away from the tumor, so the doctors’
decision on going in and taking out the whole right temporal lobe was no longer
a choice and it made the surgery very difficult. So after that there were more
scans done and I was back up at Duke a month later. The second surgery wasn’t
necessary because I had seen a nutritionist in between and she put me on a tea that miraculously helped to take away the rest of the tumor. It was a miracle ….and I didn’t have to go through second surgery, nor did I have to go through
any of the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that I was supposed to go through.
So since then I have been just like constantly monitored and everything is done
really well and I have had some much support and prayer which has helped so much. I do know that people from the American Cancer Society
have talked to me and helped me through all of this and they are so graciously
giving me a scholarship to college which will help a lot with the expense of that.
So I have to thank them ‘cause that is helping out a lot! But I am doing great, it’s been a year and a half. I hope that I can pass the 5-10 year mark – it’s
the time that people have lived with these malignant brain tumors, and I really
hope that it’s possible!!"
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