When Weyburn resident Angela Van Roon experienced a seizure in September of 2007, she began a journey that would not end until 2011 with the removal of a brain tumour.
When Weyburn resident Angela Van Roon experienced a seizure in September of 2007, she began a journey that would not end until 2011 with the removal of a brain tumour.
The journey was put on hold for a few years, as she didn't have another seizure until February of 2010, after she was married to Pat Freriks, and moved to Saskatoon.
The end result of her journey is the seizures are gone, and most of the tumour was removed; she has put down her thoughts and experiences in a new book she has just released, entitled, "Cranium Crisis", published by Word Alive Press in Winnipeg.
Visiting recently with her parents, Will and Sharon Van Roon, Angela spoke about her journey and how the book was developed, which will make her story available for friends, family and anyone interested in reading about her experiences.
When Angela had her first seizure in 2007, her parents took her to the Weyburn General Hospital, where her doctor was baffled about what might have caused it.
She had blood work done, which didn't point to anything in particular; one theory was that the seizure was caused by a herbal vitamin supplement she had taken.
She was married on Mar. 27, 2009, and moved to Saskatoon, when in February of 2010 she began to once again have seizures, causing the right side of her body to go numb, and then her hand to shake uncontrollably until the seizure was done a couple minutes later.
Her doctor at first suspected she had epilepsy, and had a number of blood tests and other tests done, including an EEG. An appointment was then made for an MRI scan in June of 2010 - and this was when it was discovered she had a brain tumour in the left cerebral hemisphere, measuring 1.4 cm by 5.5 cm by 2.3 cm.
Angela was then put on some medications, including an anticonvulsant, folate and vitamin D by her neurologist.
The seizures would hit her at sporadic times, without warning.
"I could go a number of days with nothing, then I could have six in one day. You just didn't know when they were going to hit or why," she said, explaining that when a seizure hit, "my body felt warm, then I felt dizzy so I would have to sit down. My right leg wouldn't work, and I had trembling in my hand, and after a minute or two it would go away and I'd be all right again."
Her neurologist encouraged her to start writing a journal so she could record her feelings and sensations, along with what she was eating or doing at the time the seizure occurred, so there might be a clue as to whether something external was triggering them.
The neurologist also used a "wait and watch" approach to see what would happen with the seizures, such as whether they would worsen or get better over time.
The seizures did in fact get worse, and the medication didn't seem to be helping her at all; finally she got referred to a neurosurgeon, who felt an operation was possible but was highly risky.
Eventually he admitted to Angela that "it wasn't his area of expertise" to deal with such a tumour; she had her neurologist send her to a second neurosurgeon, who told her he would be willing to perform the surgery.
Part of the reluctance on the first doctor's part, said Angela, was he felt the risk of causing paralysis was too great, and he didn't want to attempt this risky surgery.
In the meantime, she decided to do a fundraiser by climbing Grouse Mountain, raising pledges for the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada, which she did in August of 2011.
"I remember people told me I was crazy to go do this when I was still having seizures," said Angela, noting she only had one on the way up the mountain, and it didn't prevent her from doing the climb as she just took a few minutes to wait it out before continuing.
That fall, in October, she had her second consultation with the neurosurgeon. They increased the dose of medication, but when it seemed to make things worse for her, she decreased the dose.
"That's when he said he could do the surgery. It was a pretty big decision for me to make, to agree to go ahead with it," she said.
During all of this situation, she had been praying and asking God to help make the seizures go away so surgery would not be necessary; once it was clear the tumour was still in place and causing seizures, she decided she needed to trust that God would guide the hands of a skilled surgeon to do the surgery.
"When I woke up after the surgery and saw my surgeon there, I asked him how it went. He asked me to wiggle my toes, and I was able to," said Angela, noting she was home four days after this surgery, and one of the first things she wanted to do was to make muffins with her mom.
In the weeks that followed, she looked over her journal entries, which she had continued writing throughout her experience, and decided, "I've got a story to tell here. I had time since I had lost my licence, so I figured it was a story I had to tell."
Angela added she hopes the book will help anyone who is facing a crisis, even a non-medical one, as she tells about how her trust and belief in God helped her through a scary circumstance.
"The lesson is to never give up hope, have perseverance," she said.
She took some writing workshops with Alice Kuipers, who she found out was the partner of author Yann Martel, writer of the award-winning book, "Life of Pi", and she encouraged Angela to always be writing, to always "get words down on the page" every day.
Angela said the process of writing and reorganizing her thoughts and entries into a manuscript took her about a year to finish, and the book was just finished printing and released to her in May.
She held a book-signing at her home church in Weyburn, at the Free Methodist Church, and will have a signing at Indigo book store in Saskatoon on Saturday, June 8.
Some book copies will be available locally at the Weyburn Co-op, or can be ordered on-line from Amazon.
