Delicate Brain surgery Even More Difficult When A Tumor Is Fist-sized

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Mike Harris was so relieved to know that a brain tumor was behind his strange symptoms. Then came the hard part: Removing the fist-sized tumor.

Months earlier, Harris, a retired railroad man, had been enjoying life as a retiree in good health. Then, odd things began to change. An avid cyclist, he suddenly couldn’t coordinate riding a bike. He lost control of the right side of his body. Always a great reader, he became frustrated because he couldn’t remember what he’d read at the beginning of a sentence by the time he finished reading it. He lost his appetite. When he did eat, his digestive system would rebel. He and his wife, Willo, visited several doctors. None of them could figure out the cause of his symptoms and those symptoms kept getting worse. Finally, a doctor ordered an MRI of his brain and Harris had his answer: a meningioma—a fist-sized tumor growing in the narrow space between his brain and his skull.

Meningiomas are among the most common form of brain tumor and nearly all of them are benign. Many are so small they don’t need immediate surgery. Harris’ was so big it had begun to push into his brain. The pressure it produced on the brain had caused all his symptoms. Only a small handful of medical centers have the level of experience needed to complete a safe removal of Harris’ tumor. The Harrises, who live in Hanford, drove to Stanford Health Care’s Brain Tumor Center the day after his MRI. “Within an hour, I was talking to Dr. Melanie Hayden and she said to me, ‘Yes, it’s very serious, but I have a team and all we do is brains,’” Harris said. “I was impressed.”

Harris just celebrated the first anniversary of Hayden’s removal of his tumor. He and Willo spent nearly a month on the road in the RV, visiting family and enjoying the sights along the way. “I’m blessed,” he said. Since his surgery, he’s become someone call because they have a friend or a family member who have also faced brain surgery. “Don’t give up,” he tells them.