A new mum was "absolutely broken" after scans showed a 5cm tumour had been growing in her head for ten years.
Natasha Hunton-Walker, 31, had put recurrent headaches and blurred vision down to "baby brain" as the symptoms started when she gave birth to son Max. Opticians even put her eyesight issues down to breastfeeding and the exhaustion of being a new parent.
But the symptoms persisted for three months and a chance visit to an opticians saw the mother of one have more thorough tests. She was ordered to go to hospital, where a CT scan showed the golf ball-sized mass on Natasha's brain. She was diagnosed with grade-two meningioma in December last year.
"As soon as you hear the words 'brain tumour', you think death, even though it doesn't necessarily mean that now. It felt like a punch in the gut," Natasha, who lives in Greenwich, southeast London, said. "They did loads of eye tests and wanted to do a CT scan. After the scan, they told me there and then that I had a brain tumour and I was absolutely broken. I was told it was 5cm.
"They told me later that they think I've had this tumour for ten years if not more." Although Natasha, an office manager, had a ten-hour operation to remove the tumour, she feels "lucky to be alive" following her unexpected health battle. There is still a chance the tumour could one day reappear.
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The 31-year-old woman was 'broken' when she was diagnosed with the tumour (Kennedy News and Media)The mum feels the birth of her son Max in September brought her brain tumour symptoms to the surface - crediting her son for saving her life. However, she suffered exhaustion after the birth of her first baby. For me I started noticing symptoms the day I gave birth in late-September," Natasha, who is married to 31-year-old Zac, continued.
"After I gave birth, I fell asleep for a couple of hours and woke up with 'word salad'. Words were coming out my mouth but they weren't in the context that was in my brain. The doctors and midwives just thought it was exhaustion. Then seven weeks into my post-partum I had headaches pretty much every day but they weren't severe.
The office manager, who lives in London, said her headaches and blurred vision were dismissed by doctors (Kennedy News and Media)"And my vision was just weird. My peripheral vision in my left eye was slightly blurry - something just wasn't right. I kept going to the local opticians asking for an appointment but they kept saying it's really normal while you're breastfeeding to have weird vision so don't worry. I tried to go to three or four opticians in the London area but couldn't get an appointment. None of the medical staff I spoke to gave the impression they were concerned or worried. They said it's normal in postpartum days to feel like this."
Natasha had her surgery in January, approximately four months after giving birth. She added: "My interpretation is that hormones sped things up. The fact I didn't feel anything until giving birth tells me that my baby boy saved my life.A lot of symptoms are disregarded because they can be typical symptoms when you've just had a baby but I still don't think they should be ignored and passed on. This tumour could've killed me one day. I feel so lucky and grateful about how this has turned out. It could've been beyond tragic and I could've so easily ignored these symptoms."
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