When Kim Crossley went for a routine eye test, all she was thinking about was what style of glasses to get. Instead, within hours of her appointment, the seemingly-healthy 23-year-old was lying on an operating table with surgeons battling to remove a brain tumour and save her life.
Amazingly, Kim hadn’t even planned a visit to the optician on the day her tumour was discovered during the routine check. Her mum Laureen (54) had noticed Kim sometimes felt sick while reading and, thinking she just needed new glasses, booked the sight test at a Specsavers shop in Auckland.
Having difficulty getting through a good book wasn’t Kim’s only concern though. She had been feeling unwell for weeks, with blurred vision, nausea and vomiting.
“I thought I had food poisoning, but after blacking out in the shower one morning, I started to wonder if something else was going on,” says Kim. “oum had to talk me into going to the appointment, because I was sure I was going to get better soon.”
As soon as the optician, Mike Horler, checked out Kim’s eyes, he knew something was seriously wrong. “He said my optic nerves were really swollen and rang an eye clinic specialist who said I had to go in immediately. Mike even gave me exact instructions on how to get there,” she says. “Even though I felt worried about the way things were going, I was still relaxed enough to race home and feed my cats before heading there.”
Kim was given a brain scan and was surprised when the doctor called her and Laureen in immediately for the results. “I was told that I had a 5cm mass on my brain which needed to be removed urgently and I had to go to Auckland Hospital that hour for emergency surgery,” says Kim.
Tearfully, Kim and Laureen tried to take in the awful news. “I kept thinking that I was too young to have a brain tumour and hoped there was some kind of mistake,” says Kim. But there was no mistake and when they arrived at Auckland Hospital, operating staff were waiting for them. “The surgical team were amazing. They prepared me for surgery so quickly, I didn’t have time to panic,” says Kim.
The delicate and risky operation took five painstaking hours. The surgeons had to enter Kim’s skull on the right side, near the top of her head, as the tumour was just below her skull. Fifty staples were required to close the incision, leaving a scar from her right ear to the middle of her head and over to her forehead. They managed to remove all but a tiny sliver of the tumour and Kim made such good progress that she was able to go home just four days later.
Even though Kim, a laboratory technician,found out she’d been made redundant just after getting out of hospital, she was so relieved to have the tumour removed that she insisted on looking on the bright side. “I was gutted about the redundancy but it did allow me time to recover,” she says. But she still had to wait for the news about whether the tumour was malignant or not.
Because Kim’s tumour was so rare, it had to be sent to the US for analysis. Three weeks later, Kim was given the devastating news that it was cancer. She needed 33 rounds of radiotherapy to treat the small piece of remaining tumour and lost her hair in the process. Her prognosis looks positive and Kim needs one final scan this month – one year after the surgery – to get the all-clear. Kim is so glad she took her mum’s advice to get her eyes checked that fateful day and knows without that simple test, her tumour would probably have remained undiscovered until it was too late.
“oum and Mike are my heroes. Without them and the fantastic hospital team, I truly might not be here today,” she says. Kim returned to the opticians for the first time since that day to show Mike her scar, say thank you and have her eyes retested. “He was really glad there were no surprises for him this time,” says Kim. “Everything looked normal – and I got my new glasses!”
