Anxiety and alcohol seemed to be the problem. A brain scan found more.

That afternoon in August 2019, her assistants and co-workers kicked her out of the building, drove her home, and called Mayer’s husband, Andrew. When he returned to her home, she was lying on the bed in a fetal position, curled up on her with her three-year-old son asleep.

“Andrew thought I was drunk and passed out,” Meyer said.

Within hours, Meyer and her family were upset to discover that there was a hole the size of Texas in their mistaken assumptions about her behavior.

“One of the takeaways is that I picked what I thought each provider needed to know,” said Meyer, whose memory of the months leading up to diagnosis is spotty. “It didn’t help. But everyone missed [important clues] Until I was in the ER.

A doctor who began treating her shortly after her admission has a different take on what went wrong. said. She believes that “the story has settled” based on Meyer’s age, gender, and her status as her new mother. This was perpetuated without proper scrutiny and delayed a correct diagnosis to Meyer’s detriment.

In late 2015, Meyer experienced several episodes in her early pregnancy when she felt shaky and “discomfort.” “She attributed those feelings to hypoglycemia or pregnancy, but they didn’t go away after the birth of her son in mid-2016.

Meyer didn’t initially tell her gynecologist about it.

At the time, she was battling more pressing concerns. Her husband traveled frequently with her job and she was her first time mother juggling her baby with her own demanding job.

“I felt like a lot of failures,” she said.

Based on her friends’ descriptions of the problem, Mayer concluded that she suffered from anxiety.

Based largely on her friends’ descriptions of the problem, Meyer concluded that she was in pain. anxietyShe told OB/GYN about the feeling of trembling and “then” panicking. Doctors ordered tests to check her thyroid. When the results were normal, the doctor prescribed medication to treat anxiety and depression.

But even after months of taking the medication, Meyer still wasn’t feeling better. rice field. Meyer, who had no history of mental health problems, scheduled an appointment with a psychiatric clinic, where she met a doctor’s assistant.

PA prescribed a second antidepressant, then a third. Meyer took them for several months with no improvement.

By then, she was feeling chronically tired and struggling to cope with her son, a feisty, talkative toddler. Reminisce. “Work was very busy and I was drinking a lot of juice.” She got promoted and her husband started traveling more often, sometimes as much as four days a week.

On weekends she often took long naps. “Andrew saw that I was really in pain and tried to get it. [our son] out of the house,” she said. Sometimes the pair spent four or five hours at the zoo.

“I knew I wasn’t losing weight. I didn’t feel like I was getting any better,” Meyer recalled.

She had new worries. she is drunk

In the evenings after her son had gone to bed, Meyer often drank wine when her husband was out of town and talking on the phone. However, the next morning she often did not remember the details of the conversation. sometimes even if they had a conversation.

“There have been so many times that he and I have worried that we are drinking more than I think we are,” Meyer said. She didn’t count her drinks, and her husband didn’t look at the empty bottle first to see how much she drank. I figured it was showing a problem.

Meyer concluded that he uses alcohol to deal with escalating anxiety. This appeared to be impervious to medications and treatments, and he became an alcoholic.

That’s a conclusion that stood out in her medical record, reaffirmed by two mental health professionals, and apparently unchallenged.

In late 2018, Meyer began seeing a social worker for regular talk therapy sessions.

A few months later, he referred her to a psychiatrist for a consultation in April 2019. Both confirmed her diagnosis of anxiety and alcohol problems, she said. By then, Meyer was on four medications to treat anxiety and depression. She didn’t help anyone. Her panic attacks were more frequent, disruptive, and occurring almost daily. She struggled to perform at her job. Her co-workers started noticing something was wrong. She confided in several people that she suffered from alcoholism.

In the spring of 2019, Meyer began attending AA meetings. “It was a safe place to talk about things that felt crazy or that I attributed to alcohol,” she said. It was the perfect place.”

But her deterioration was evident. One time, when she was at a strategy meeting, her executives were taken aback by her expression and asked her, “Are you okay?” Meyer assured him she was. “I must not have really cared about it,” she said. Meyer was beginning to have her seizures, but she didn’t recognize anyone as one.

In May, she nearly hit a wall while backing out of the garage. Her husband shouted her warning. She told her psychiatrist about the incident.Doctors advised Meyer that she may be experiencing side effects of anti-anxiety medications Xanax I was careful not to take it if she was driving.

Because her memory is confused, most of what Meyer knows about the events at the office that happened three months later was learned after the fact. I don’t remember lying in bed or the behavior that caused my husband to call me 119 hours later when he woke up. And she has only vague memories of being taken to the ER in her ambulance.

A CT scan of her head soon after Meyer’s arrival revealed a devastating cause for her debilitating symptoms. Peach-sized tumors had invaded both frontal lobes of her brain, causing cognitive and personality changes and increasingly severe seizures.

Because of its enormous size, doctors suspected it was an advanced cancer. They initially told her husband that she might only have a few months to live.

Meyer immediately transferred UT Southwestern Medical Center In Dallas, she was rushed to the operating room less than 48 hours after her colleagues kicked her out of the office because she thought she was drunk. headaches and other symptoms were attributed to a brain tumor.)

A pathologist will determine if the tumor is oligodendroglioma, a rare cancer that attacks the brain and spinal cord. About 1,100 cases are diagnosed in the United States each year, usually in men between the ages of 35 and 44. These tumors are classified as less invasive (usually grow slowly over years before they cause symptoms) or as fast-growing and more aggressive. – A grade malignant tumor. Symptoms include seizures, memory loss, and personality changes. anxiety Not just panic attacks, but cognitive issues as well.

The cause of oligodendrogliomas is unknown, but radiation exposure is thought to play a role. Treatment consists of surgery to remove as much of the mass as possible, possibly followed by radiation or chemotherapy. Cancer can be treated, but it cannot be cured.

Doctors told Meyer that his tumor may have been present for at least a decade, but it turned out to be indolent. “We were so relieved,” she recalled. Surgeons were able to remove about 75% of it.

Weeks after surgery, she saw a brain tumor specialist Elizabeth Marra staff neuro-oncologist Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UTSW.

“I was completely blown away by her whole story. Oligodendroglioma.

“I think the classic example of missed opportunities along the way was that she was a young woman and was undergoing treatment for anxiety and depression and was getting worse.”

— Elizabeth Marr, M.D.

Her records included descriptions of incidents attributed to mental health problems or alcohol use, but no one ordered a blood alcohol level. They didn’t seem to think that something organic could be causing her psychotic symptoms.

“She had a baby and started having depression and anxiety, worsening short-term memory, difficulty concentrating, and confusion,” Maher said, noting that such problems can be reflexively overlooked postpartum. Maher pointed out that records show that Meyer occasionally stared into space during treatment. Absence seizures It is no longer recognized.

“I think the classic example of missed opportunities along the way was that she was a young woman who was being treated for anxiety and depression and was getting worse,” Maher observed. It can be very difficult to get someone to take you seriously.”

Meyer, now 39, said she believed self-diagnosis played a role and wished she had seen her doctor. She didn’t mention or misunderstand her warning signs, she told therapists and psychiatrists that she occasionally vomited after a spell of staring and had urinary incontinence in the months before her diagnosis. did not mention that he had developed Both can be associated with seizures.

In the weeks following surgery, Meyer said her cognition, memory, and general quality of life improved significantly.

This process can take years to slow the progression of the tumor, but postoperative treatment may include drug therapy such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy. For the past year, Meyer has been on newly approved drugs that target specific mutations, she also takes medication to control seizures and has her quarterly MRI scans. I’m here.

Adjusting to a brain tumor diagnosis is a process, Meyer said. She participates in a cancer support group for those under 40, and she has met a woman with the same tumor at church. In December 2020, she gave birth to her second child after being advised by her doctor to “live her own life.”

“I’ve come to terms with it,” Meyer said of her diagnosis.rear [her older son] “It would have saved a lot of heartbreak and stress,” was born.

For her neuro-oncologist, Meyer’s case highlights an important caveat. “Don’t get attached to the story,” advised Maher. “Stick to the facts.”

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