Betty Johnson

Dear Family and Friends, 
This entry is being written by Clay Johnson meaning that nearly all of the information is second hand. I will do my best to communicate everything accurately. That being said, here is the back story on what has been going on with my mom, Betty Johnson. 

For the past several months, she has been experiencing a buildup of several symptoms or conditions that have been impacting her and dad's quality of life. All of these conditions are seemingly innocent on their own but as we are learning they were indicative of something larger going on with her body. Specifically, the issues mom had been having were some newly developed sinus problems, loss of vision quality, and severe migraine headaches that did not respond to prescription pain medication. Initially, the doctors attempted to treat all of theseailments individually but were mostly unsuccessful and thus sort of stumped. Then one day her eye doctor decided to send her for an MRI as they saws omething unusual impacting her optic nerve. The results of her MRI showed a mysterious mass located in her skull next to her brain.  

Immediately a flurry of tests and activity occurred to diagnose just what this mass was, but ultimately there was not much the doctors could derive without a physical sample. What they ultimately did was decide to simply watch it and scheduled mom for regular MRI appointments to check and make sure it hadn't changed. After the initial few appointments, all appeared well as the mass did not appear toactually be causing any of the original symptoms mentioned above nor did itappear to be growing in size. There was even the suggestion that this mass was probably something that she may have been carrying around for decades and it was just now discovered. All the while these scans are going on, mom continued to suffer through her symptoms and tried other methods to alleviate her pain but nothing seemed to work.

Then, with the most recent MRI scan in early July, the situation had changed. The mysterious mass had grown and did in fact appear to be putting pressure on her optic nerve and sinus cavities which most likely explained some of her symptoms. The doctors then sent mom to a neurologist for additional analysis. The results of this exam also revealed that mom had been having multiple seizures throughout the day that were most likely a byproduct of this mass. It was explained that the seizures are her brain’s way or rebooting and working around the impacted area in order to accomplish normal tasks and activity. They are not typical seizures in the sense that you cannot see them occurring, but rather mom simply has a pause in her cognitive thought and then resumes whatever she was doing. In fact it is likely that they only last a few seconds so you really could not notice from the outside.

By now, the attitude of mom’s doctors had changed and they said the mass needed to be biopsied and removed. Mom got this news in the second week of July and had the surgery approximately 3 weeks later. Please check the “Journal” portion of this websiteas we will post updates as we learn them a mom progresses through her recoveryand treatment.

Thank you for all your love and support.