Maggie's story of hope

By Kristi Dice

February 7, 2005 - My oldest daughter Maggie, who was 7, got up and got herself ready for school. Maggie came in and said that she was dizzy and didn't feel well. I decided to take her to the doctor. I sent her back to bed until it was time to go and had a difficult time waking her an hour later. The doctor was very concerned. They wanted me to take her to Children's right away. When we got to the ER, we were shown in immediately, and Maggie was taken for a CT scan. It was then that the ER doctor told me that Maggie had a brain tumor. I think the world stopped at that point. I hadn't told my husband we were even going to the hospital because I didn't want to worry him.

Fortunately, he had called home before his plane took off, and made the decision to get off the plane. He arrived just as they were taking her to surgery to drain the fluid out of her brain. We hadn't been there an hour. Maggie came out of the surgery just fine and was scheduled to have the tumor removed the next morning. She had a very large growth close to her brain stem, blocking the fourth ventricle. We were so blessed to have Dr. Ellenbogen performing Maggie's surgery. He was able to remove all but a few fragmented cells in a 7 hour surgery. Our diagnosis was an ependymoma.

Complications started the next day. During surgery, due to where the tumor was, Maggie lost the nerves in her throat, causing her to not be able to breathe on her own. Her vocal cords weren't functioning correctly and she had no gag reflex. The nurses in ICU were amazing. They made an awful situation much better. We thought the tumor would be our big challenge and when it was gone, all would be well, but it didn't turn out that way. Maggie did inpatient rehab for a few weeks. With all of her tubes, wires and, we just weren't ready to take her home. Rehab was wonderful! The nurses, therapists and doctors were amazing. On March 17th, 39 days after we had arrived, Maggie finally got to go home!

Maggie would not be here and doing so very well if it weren't for the doctors, nurses and therapists at Children's. From the very first moment we arrived, they were caring and compassionate! I am convinced if I had taken her anywhere else on that morning that she would not be here with us today. Maggie will continue to have MRI's and be followed forever. To look at Maggie today, you would never in a million years guess that she had had a brain tumor! We are so blessed to have been in the right place at the right time. I really wanted to post Maggie's story so that someone out there that is just finding out their child has a brain tumor can have some hope. Hope that things can work out okay that it will really be alright. When we were first diagnosed, I couldn't find a single happy ending. Maggie IS that happy ending. She amazes us with her beautiful spirit. We are so very fortunate to still have her here with us. We owe her life to Dr Ellenbogen, Dr Olson and every nurse, doctor and therapist at Children's. I am in awe of what they do every day, it is amazing. We can never ever thank them enough for giving us back our little girl.