Sara - brain tumor

When Sara took the lectern to teach her first class of the fall 2021 semester, you would be hard-pressed to tell that she’d undergone major brain surgery just a few months prior. Less than three months earlier, Sara had been admitted to the hospital with a seizure and found to have two giant tumors compressing her frontal and temporal lobes, pushing her brain nearly a centimeter and half to the opposite side of her skull. A few days later, she underwent a highly complex surgery to remove both tumors. The surgery took more than 10 hours due to its delicate nature. But now, only three months later, Sara is not only back to work but also hiking, running, cooking and spending time with friends. “Dr. Eddie was so patient, his assistants are amazing, and the neuro ICU nurses were so selfless,” Sara explains. “I owe them a lot.”

An unexpected seizure

A brain tumor was the last thing on Sara’s mind when she went to help around her mother’s house in late May. Her mom was recovering from a recent knee surgery and Sara, a healthy, active 42-year-old living in Denver was looking forward to the summer ahead. However, during this visit, Sara unexpectedly suffered a seizure. While Sara herself has no recollection of the events that followed, she was told her mother managed to contact a neighbor, who helped call 911. Emergency services arrived and transported Sara to the closest hospital. Imaging performed there revealed the cause of the seizure – two enormous meningiomas. “The nurses told my family that Swedish is one of the best in the country in terms of neurosurgery so they would like to transfer me to there,” Sara details. “Dr. Eddie is a specialist there with expertise in treating meningioma.”

Highly specialized, complex neurosurgery

Vadim ‘Eddie’ Tsvankin, MD (whom Sara and his other patients affectionately call “Dr. Eddie”) is a highly specialized neurosurgeon with the Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute at Swedish Medical Center. A fellowship-trained neurosurgical oncologist, Dr. Eddie specializes in brain and spine tumor surgery. “Meningiomas arise from the protective layer of tissue surrounding our brain and spinal cord – the meninges,” Dr. Eddie states. “Although they are typically benign, the problem is location – the inside of the head is an enclosed space, and they can push on or irritate critical brain structures, resulting in seizures, numbness, weakness, or difficulty with speech and language.”

In Sara’s case, two procedures were performed to remove the tumor – the first, a tumor embolization to occlude the blood vessel feeding the tumor, allowing Dr. Eddie to minimize blood loss. “First I had an operation to block the blood vessels and then the big operation was June 3,” Sara clarifies. And a big surgery, it was. The surgery to remove the meningiomas took more than ten hours to complete. “The tumors both arose from the skull base and were intertwined with branches of critical arteries feeding the brain – an injury to any of those vessels would have resulted in a stroke,” recalls Dr. Eddie. “The challenge of these tumors was carefully identifying and preserving each one.”

Because the area is so delicate, Dr. Eddie was meticulous in its removal. “Anybody can remove a brain tumor,” says Dr. Eddie. “The question is, can you remove a brain tumor while preserving all the essential brain structures? The structures affected by the tumor may be those that make the patient who they are, that allow them to move or to speak, or that allow them to derive joy from life. Removing the tumor isn’t enough. The metric for success isn’t just a clean MRI after surgery – it’s the quality of life our patients enjoy after our job is done.”

Unbelievable progress to recovery

After the procedure, Sara was placed on steroids to control swelling and spent time recovering at the Swedish Medical Center neuro ICU where she received specialized care designed especially for patients who have undergone neurosurgery.

“For the first two weeks after surgery, it was pretty hard but after they took me off the steroids, the progress was super-fast,” Sara recalls. “About five weeks after surgery, my sister and I decided to go to the neuro ICU to give the nurses flowers because they were so nice during my time there. When we came, they didn’t believe that I was walking and talking and looking so good—they just couldn’t believe my progress.”

While Sara initially planned to take time off for the fall semester, after less than two months of recovery, she felt well enough to ask the university if she’d be able to teach after all. “I felt back to normal. I also started hiking again; I started running again. I asked Dr. Eddie ‘can I go running’ and he told me to wait for a few more weeks. So, I started running again after seven weeks,” she adds.

Sara calls Dr. Eddie an angel and credits his highly specialized expertise, his patience with her and the selfless care of his support team with her amazing recovery. “One of the most important gifts from this is getting to know a lot of selfless people—Dr. Eddie, his assistants, his nurses. They are amazing, so patient and I owe them… everything, really.”

To learn more about neurosurgical care at Swedish Medical Center and about the Swedish Neuro Network