Junita Gomes, the Kato Village, Region Eight woman who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour more than a year ago, has undergone a successful “lifesaving” surgical procedure to drain the fluid from her brain.
The ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt procedure, which is the first phase of Gomes’ treatment, would have cost $1.8 million at a private hospital and her family was seeking to raise the funds on their own. After head of Neuro-surgery at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) Dr Amarnauth Dukhi learnt of their plight, he offered to do the surgery free of cost.
The surgery was done on June 8th at the GPH and Gomes was discharged last Monday. She is currently recuperating at her home surrounded by her family.
According to the Mayo Clinic website, an acoustic neuroma, also known as vestibular schwannoma, is a non-cancerous and usually slow-growing tumour that develops on the main nerve leading from the inner ear to the brain.
Gomes, a former teacher, was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma on March 5th, 2019. The illness had left her bedridden and unable to see, speak, eat, or hear.
In an interview with Sunday Stabroek, Dr Dukhi explained that following the
surgery, Gomes’ condition has improved significantly.
She can now walk, sit up, eat and even hear on her own. Gomes is, however, still unable to see and doctors are uncertain whether her sight will be restored. “She has improved drastically, like from not moving, in bed, not eating, pining away… she walked out of the hospital after surgery,” Dukhi said.
According to him, the purpose of the surgery was to take care of the complications which were triggered by the tumour.
“She does have a tumour deep in her head, next to the brain stem and that tumour is called a CP angle tumour. A CP angle is a cerebellopontine angle tumour deep in the brain. Now that tumour would have provoked a blockage in the head so her CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) could not have circulated and that is the complication of having the tumour there with the blockage. [That] was what really was going to kill her if we didn’t do that surgery,” he explained.
Dukhi added that the while the surgery saved Gomes’ life, she will need to undergo a major surgery to remove the tumour from her brain at a later time. “…It’s going to take care of her now but eventually she will have to have the tumour removed,” Dukhi stated.
He added that the St. Joseph Mercy hospital had offered to do the procedure free at cost also but that offer is now on hold and will be used when the need arises for Gomes to undergo her next operation. “Because that procedure could have been done at GPH, we did that at GPH and we asked Mercy to hold anything pro bono just so in the future if she has to get the tumour removed, we are going to try there,” he said.
Maria Jeffers had previously told this newspaper that her sister, Gomes, who is a mother of eight, decided to visit the GPH after experiencing severe headaches. It was then that the tumour was detected.
Jeffers related that as the time passed, Gomes’ condition worsened.
In January, she said, Gomes began to experience blurred vision. “I went up back there [to Kato] the first week in March [this year] and I saw her. When I saw her I couldn’t believe it was her. She wasn’t seeing at all. She can’t walk. We got to move her around, hold her because she dragging on one foot. It was a real task because you know how the interior houses are, uphill and all of that,” Jeffers explained.
She said she then decided to have Gomes brought back to Georgetown to consult with a doctor again. “We went back to GPHC because she started to have seizures in February. So she having seizures, lost balance and no vision and the headache and then a fluid start running through her nostril,” she added.
According to Jeffers, Gomes met with a doctor in the Accident and Emergency Unit at the GPH and treatment was recommended but she was sent home. “They send her home with treatment and then we decide we need to get her an MRI or something and then we went to Mercy Hospital……She had it done,” Jeffers said.
The MRI, Jeffers said, showed that Gomes now had CP angle brain tumour and obstructive hydrocephalus. As a result, Jeffers said doctors recommended that Gomes undergo the VP shunt surgical procedure at the soonest.
Jeffers had said they were told that this could not be done immediately at the GPH since there was a “long” waiting list. The only other hospital where it could have been be done is the St Joseph Mercy Hospital at a cost of $1.8 million.
Apart from her teaching job, Gomes previously worked as a cook and was the caretaker of the Kato Guest House for a number of years.
Jeffers related that following her sister’s diagnosis, she lost her job. “In the year, she lost her job because she couldn’t go back to work. The pain was so much and then she couldn’t keep her balance… so she started to lose her balance and then she was like that,” she said.
Gomes’ husband also lost his job since he had to take care of her.
