Much like parenting, every pregnancy is unique and can vary in the strangest of ways.
No one’s pregnancy is ever an easy ride, with some problem usually creeping up during those nine seemingly endless months. For first time parents, this can be very stressful as they never know what to truly expect. This is where experienced mothers, whether they be family or friend, can really help.
However not all mothers have easy access to such resources, so when Maria Emilse Muñoz Peña began to lose her eyesight during pregnancy, she thought it was normal. After all, most mothers go through what is often called “morning sickness”, so she thought it was merely part of the ritual.
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At first, she struggled to read words on paper, but then as time progressed it got worse and worse. Soon she was unable to see shapes, colors or even faces any longer. It started to alarm Maria, so she decided she would go to her eye doctor to see if she should get some glasses at least during the pregnancy. She still thought it was because of the pregnancy.
But when Maria brought this up with her eye doctor, the doctor was absolutely shocked and immediately had her sent to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial. They immediately began to run countless tests on her to find out what was truly wrong. Losing your eyesight during pregnancy is most certainly not normal. After the marathon of tests including an MRI, the doctors were finally able to tell Maria what was wrong with her. And it was not good news.
It turned out that Maria had a brain tumor that was growing every hour. The tumor was originally growing slowly, however due to the pregnancy hormones, the tumor began to grow rapidly and became an urgent problem.
While the tumor was benign, meaning that it wasn’t cancer, the size and rapid rate of growth meant time was of utmost importance. Unfortunately, if the doctors did not operate on this tumor, not only would Maria forever lose her eyesight, but she could also die from this tumor!
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Unfortunately, brain surgery is still a very risky surgery, for anyone regardless of health to go under. As the old saying goes “it’s not brain surgery”, there’s still a bit of luck that goes with these surgeries, but it can be even more difficult for a pregnant woman. If there are any mistakes the results would be disastrous. But with time being of the utmost importance, the doctors and Maria had no other choice.
In order for Maria and her baby to survive, she had to go under the knife at six months pregnant. Like anyone, Maria was nervous when she went under the knife. Thankfully, through the miracle of modern science and some great doctors, it was a success.
The surgery would take the doctors twelve hours, requiring them to untangle the tumor from her optic nerves and during the surgery they even found another tumor wasn’t seen on the MRI scan! Incredibly, Maria came out of the surgery perfectly.
Later Maria’s baby boy was born without a hitch via a C-section.
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I can see perfectly fine, and I have my baby here and he’s perfect.