Getting the news that something is wrong with you is always unnerving. They say ignorance is bliss, but in many cases it’s early detection and treatment that is needed.
For Kelly Stafford, her journey back to health started in January when she noticed some concerning “vertigo.”
“The room just kind of started spinning on me,” she told WDIV. “I was holding our newborn at that point, and I kind of just like almost threw her to Matthew because I felt myself going down.”
“I remember Matthew gets a phone call and I’m sitting there with all three of our girls, just hanging out on the floor,” Kelly told WDIV. “Matthew gets a phone call and I can kinda tell his demeanor a little bit. The phone call probably lasts five minutes, and he gets off, and I was like, ‘Who’s that’ and he’s like ‘Asheesh’. I said, ‘Oh OK, what’s going on?'”
“And he goes ‘Well, I don’t want you to worry, they said they found something in your MRI. We probably just need to go get it checked. I kinda brushed it off. I didn’t think twice about it. Until they sent us the doctor we were going to and it was a neurosurgeon at UCLA. That’s when I was like, OK, this is interesting.”
But it was about to get more interesting.
“I don’t know if this doctor didn’t know that I didn’t know, she pulls up my MRI and goes, ‘Well, here is your brain tumor,”’ Kelly said. “We had no idea.”
The acoustic neuroma was a benign tumor, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t serious. Kelly could have lost her hearing because of the way the growth was crowding her brain, so she was quickly wheeled into a 12-hour surgery.
The procedure was hard for Matthew, who didn’t know what was going on.
“They couldn’t go, ‘Here’s three paragraphs of what’s happening,”’ he said. “It was kind of like, ‘Ran into a hurdle, expect the surgery to go two hours longer than expected.”’
“I’m home,” Kelly wrote April 26 on Instagram. “I’m home and I got to spend a few hours with my little humans. It filled my heart so much. I can’t even describe it.”
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“I wish they could stay, but I know I’m not ready for all of it. When they took out the tumor, they also wiped out the entire balance system on my right side. I wish I could explain it, but I think it’s something you have to experience.”
“I can’t turn my head right without feeling college drunk,” she wrote. “I’m talking end of the night, cant put one foot in front of the other, knowing you’ll be sleeping on the bathroom floor, college drunk. I have to rework my brain to know that it can only rely on my left side, which will take time, a good amount of time.”
“And when there are two toddlers running below your feet while you are trying to relearn basic things like walking.. it makes it seem like there are a million more moving parts to it.. maybe because there are,” she added.
Her kids are her motivating factor, and though she’s fighting fatigue and brain fog, she’s working hard to get back to her athletic self.
On Aug. 17, Kelly posted an update on Instagram.
“The human brain and body really are remarkable,” she wrote. “Four months out. Every day is different.. but I am so grateful for every day.. the struggles and the triumphs. Going to continue to put one foot in front of the other, just like the first day after surgery. “
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“She’s an incredible role model to our girls,” her husband said. “I’m just really proud of her.”
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she's strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
As of January 2019, Amanda has written over 1,000 stories for The Western Journal but doesn't really know how. Graduating from California State Polytechnic University with a MA in Rhetoric/Composition and TESOL, she wrote her thesis about metacognitive development and the skill transfer between reading and writing in freshman students.
She has a slew of interests that keep her busy, including trying out new recipes, enjoying nature, discussing ridiculous topics, reading, drawing, people watching, developing curriculum, and writing bios. Sometimes she has red hair, sometimes she has brown hair, sometimes she's had teal hair.
With a book on productive communication strategies in the works, Amanda is also writing and illustrating some children's books with her husband, Edward.
