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Aimee Garrison’s second pregnancy began without event or concern. She already had one child – who was now a toddler – and even felt well enough during this second pregnancy that she was continuing to work out and run.
During week 25, however, Garrison began to feel a strange pain in her right shoulder.
She thought she’d just pinched a nerve during her weight-lifting routine. But the pain continued and spread until she couldn’t even put on mascara.
That was when Garrison finally went to see her OB, who referred her to a sports doctor, who gave Garrison some stretches to relieve her pinched nerve pain.
Nothing helped. The stretches, a massage, a visit to a chiropractor, even Tylenol did nothing to ease the pain. After two weeks of sleepless nights from the agony, Garrison suffered an anxiety attack and was brought to the hospital by her husband.
After a long night of pain – in spite of the doctors’ painkillers – Garrison was told she needed to undergo an MRI. The doctors wouldn’t be able to diagnose the problem otherwise.
However, in order to run an MRI, the patient needs to ingest a contrasting agent – which can cause long-term problems for a fetus during pregnancy.
Garrison had no other choice but to “sign [her] life away saying [the doctors] weren’t responsible for the baby.” At that point, she said, “I cared more about my baby than myself, but I was like, do whatever you have to do. I felt like a horrible mom.”
When the results came in, Garrison received the horrible news: She had a tumor in her spinal cord.
Without a sample of the tumor, the doctors weren’t able to further diagnose the problem. And no one was about to put Garrison under the knife when she was 28 weeks pregnant.
The only other option was to take Garrison’s baby out prematurely.
But thankfully, she never had to.
That was when Dr. Daniel Orringer stepped in, telling Garrison that he’d seen other patients with cases like hers. In all those other cases, the patients’ tumors had been growing slowly enough that it was possible to wait until after their babies were born to begin work on the tumor.
Though this decision was “a little bit of a leap of faith,” it was a risk Garrison was willing to take for her child.
How everything ultimately played out, Garrison acknowledges, “was a miracle.”
Garrison was able to complete her pregnancy, give birth to her child safely through C-section, and properly prepare for her own surgery to finally remove the tumor.
The procedure lasted 20 hours, with a small scare in the middle, but Garrison woke up groggy and feeling “like shit” – but in complete control of all her fingers and toes.
It took Garrison a few months of recovery and physical therapy to return home to her husband, toddler, and newborn baby – but now, five months after her surgery, she’s safe and happy at home with clean MRI scans to show for it.
